Thomas Loster

La Bohème in the rain

Almost every major event is insured nowadays - whether it is a Wimbledon final, the Three Tenors at the Eiffel Tower, an open-air cinema, or the Olympic Games.

If an event has to be cancelled, all the expenditure incurred for its preparation and execution is usually covered by weather insurance. This includes the cost of moving it to a different venue or time, loss of proceeds, etc. Sponsors and income from advertising often push the sums insured to giddying heights, especially if an event promises to attract a large television audience.

If, for example, the Wimbledon final has to be postponed from Sunday to Monday, the number of viewers falls and so too do the advertising proceeds. If an event takes place in the open air, weather insurance has an important role to play - alongside many other forms of insurance. After all, nobody likes sitting in an uncovered stand when it is pouring down with rain. One exception to this rule is the audience at rock concerts, where the susceptibility to rain and cold can fall to zero (the classic example of this being the Woodstock concert in 1969).

The beginning of an open-air event is usually postponed by 30 or 60 minutes if it is raining. If, after this time, there is no chance of the event taking place in the dry, it is cancelled. In many countries, open-air events lasting several weeks have established themselves over the years and have gained world renown, such as the Opera Festival in Verona (Italy) and the performances of "Everyman" in Salzburg (Austria).

The 25 performances on the Lake Constance stage in Bregenz (Austria) from mid-July to mid-August have also enjoyed immense popularity for many years. Operas and musicals alternate there every two years. Weather insurance is taken out for each performance, covering cancellation or transfer to a nearby theatre in the event of rain. As the region has an average of 16 rainy days a month in the summer, it is not unusual for the festival to be hit by an evening thunderstorm or heavy rain, even if the operators themselves are very intent on the performance taking place.

Mimi gets wet

At the beginning of August 2002, several thousand festival guests were looking forward to a picturesque sunset followed by a performance of Puccini's "La Bohème" on the floating stage in Bregenz. But the weather conditions had been critical the whole day.

For a long time the performance was threatened by dense cloud and brief showers; in the late afternoon, however, the atmospheric conditions calmed down somewhat.

But then, just after the opening bars, the rain set in and gradually got worse. The spectators tried to protect themselves with jackets, plastic wraps, and blankets, while the actors on the stage got wetter and wetter, playing the sad love story of Rodolfo the poet and his sick Mimi in constantly growing puddles of water.

The rain turned the slanting stage into a skating rink, the fires from the large torches that were set up flickered in the wind, and some of them were doused by the thrashing rain. It was only towards the end of the performance that the rain slowly began to let up. The applause was thunderous.

The event was insured against rain

In view of the weather conditions during the performance, insurers would have reckoned with a certain cancellation claim. In this case, however, nothing of the sort happened, the performance was not stopped, no claim was made even though a cancellation would have been covered in full by the insurance policy. Why not?

As chance would have it, this was the very day on which "La Bohème" was to be recorded for television, involving a lot of technology and considerable costs. The festival operators and the TV producer had decided to continue with the project in spite of the inclement conditions.The festival's insurers will have enjoyed watching the recording, feeling grateful to be in a dry living room and even more grateful that a clear-cut insured loss had been prevented by a stroke of good fortune.