I had a rather nasty experience listen to an opera last week -- after a great aria the house erupted into a prolonged applause, towards the end of the applause I developed pain in my ear, as if pressure were building. Since then I've had minor ear aches and sustained ringing in my ear (well, more than usual and at a different frequency. I had a bit of ear trauma about two years ago which left me with occasional ringing in the ears). My ears also seem to be a bit more sensitive to noise since the performance.
Clearly I'm worried about having damaged my ears, especially since I'm already blessed (cursed!) with sensitive ears to begin with. I'm seeing my doctor this week but I'm wondering if I'm potentially damaging my hearing while I practice or during lessons. Are we capable of creating enough volume to damange our own hearing? The ringing sensation was definitely worse at my first practice after the performance.
My other question is what to do about performances. Ear plugs mean that I lose the pianos and pianissimos in most houses unless I start buying much better seats, but after last week I'm worried about the noise level at operas. Is it loud enough to cause hearing damage? I don't even want to imagine trying to learn how to sing if my ears are going to fail on me in the process.
Thanks for the help. Ingo
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