Any earplug recommendations for protecting one's hearing at concerts?

[Serial_Apologist]

Some of us 'ave no 'air left...

Or, as the prostitute said to Van Gogh: "'Ello, wot's this ear?"

[David-G]

I have only once been to a concert which was uncomfortably loud. This was the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh; I was sitting near the front of the stalls. I can't now remember what the programme was, but I was thinking how much better it would have been to be in the Upper Circle.

And I have once been to an opera which was impossibly loud, "The Mask of Orpheus" by Birtwhistle at the ENO about 30 years ago. It was so impossibly loud that I was sitting with my fingers in my ears - and at the interval I decided that I just couldn't stand it any longer, and left. The only time that I have left early in many years of going to opera and concerts.

[Beef Oven!]

I have only once been to a concert which was uncomfortably loud. This was the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh; I was sitting near the front of the stalls. I can't now remember what the programme was, but I was thinking how much better it would have been to be in the Upper Circle.

And I have once been to an opera which was impossibly loud, "The Mask of Orpheus" by Birtwhistle at the ENO about 30 years ago. It was so impossibly loud that I was sitting with my fingers in my ears - and at the interval I decided that I just couldn't stand it any longer, and left. The only time that I have left early in many years of going to opera and concerts.

I suppose you've never been to a Black Sabbath gig.

[umslopogaas]

Interesting. I went to one of those initial performances of 'The Mask of Orpheus' at the ENO (and still treasure the programme). I think there were six in all, and apart from a recent concert performance on the South Bank, it has not been staged again as far as I know. I remember that the music was completely beyond my comprehension, and was certainly loud at times, but not impossibly so - at any rate, I stayed to the end.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I do remember going to a concert in the Free Trade Hall to hear Rachmaninov's PC 1, sitting in the middle of the front row of the stalls. I was positioned in the exact where the piano's lid had the strongest effect. Never again.

[David-G]

I suppose you've never been to a Black Sabbath gig.

You suppose correctly!