But in his closing remarks Nick Smith, acting for Mr Johnston, hit out at Mr Rizzi.
At that point, Rizzi said, the singer motioned to the band to get out.
Rizzi found himself clawing through a panicked crowd that surged blindly toward the door.
Murray "Sandy" Johnston, 61, claims he was bullied and harassed by former musical director Carlo Rizzi, 50.
Rizzi was lying on top of two or three people, several more heaped on top of him.
Rizzi was due to hand in three separate course work projects for classes in painting, printmaking and sculpture.
Rizzi was stuck, unable to move, taking in gulps of smoke, feeling the gaseous mix burn his lungs.
He described Mr Rizzi, who is no longer WNO musical director and who did not give evidence at the tribunal, as a "vindictive prima donna".
Mr Johnston, who had served with the WNO for 34 years, claimed wrongful dismissal alleging Mr Rizzi bullied and "persistently abused" him in a 16-year vendetta.
Mr Johnston had described how he got off to a bad start with Mr Rizzi during the conductor's first stint as WNO musical director in 1994, when he asked him to stop singing at a rehearsal.
Moving between the worlds of architecture and graphics, Rizzi also designed the Happy Rizzi House - an office building in Germany, the front page of a newspaper in Hamburg and three versions of the New Beetle for Volkswagen in 1999.
"I was right there, so even though I was far from the door, at least I realized something was wrong, " said Rodrigo Rizzi, a first-year nursing student who was next to the stage when the fire broke out and watched the tragedy unfold, horror-stricken and helpless.
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