Six years after an incident that disrupted the end of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the Capitole in Toulouse, a stagehand was sentenced by the criminal court of Toulouse. A piece of scenery weighing more than 200 kg was supposed to symbolically stop at 80 cm from the American tenor Robert Dean Smith who was lying down. But the rock continued its descent. A stagehand stopped the progression and the opera singer rolled to avoid being crushed.
Another stagehand, the one now sentenced, is said to have modified the computer program.
The defendant was sentenced to 8 months in prison with a suspended sentence, a symbolic €1 for the town hall and €1,500 for legal costs.