Funding Cuts + A Slap From Riccardo Muti; La Scala's Bad Week

We're not sayin' there's a connection between these two events, mind you. We report.

1 - La Scala's legal counsel requires Opera Chic to change her logo and to remove a bunch of pictures taken inside the theatre from her blog. She bravely caves in.

A few days later,

2 - Milan's Mayor cuts the city's funding to La Scala; and Riccardo Muti, as a guest of the MiTo Festival (really cool roster: Ian Bostridge, Yuri Temirkanov,  Riccardo Chailly, Fabio Luisi, Gianandrea Noseda, Hèlène Grimaud, Kent Nagano, George Pehlivanian, Maxim Vengerov, Charles Dutoit and many others, full program in .pdf here) will conduct in nearby Turin the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in September but has refused to conduct at la Scala, letting it be known -- thru art critic and Culture Secretary of Milan's city govt Vittorio Sgarbi quoted in today's Repubblica, story not online -- that "he'll be back when Donna Elvira does not appear on la Scala's stage riding a moped" (last year's Don Giovanni, directed by Peter Mussbach, famously featured a scene where Donna Elvira joyrides on a vintage Lambretta moped: we'd show you the photo but then we'd hear from la Scala's lawyers again, no thx bi, we'll wait until Berlin's Staatsoper makes those images available to all bloggers, not only to the bloggers they like).   

Milan mayor Letizia Moratti explained that la Scala "receives 6.3 million euros a year and another 1 to 3 million euros from the central government in Rome". Some of those city funds will be instead given to other smaller theatres and orchestras. Not to la Scala. "We have 33 institutions that receive a total sum of 300,000 euros; Pomeriggi Musicali receives 250,000 euros, Orchestra Verdi 300,000. The lack of balance is self evident".

What does it mean?

It means: All that government cash? Some of it ain't coming next year!

Since the possibility of downsizing the already-bloated personnel of la Scala (four times as large as the Metropolitan Opera's, according to Italian newspaper Il Foglio) is not going to happen (ditto for the upper echelon of the opera house reducing their own salaries), OC fears that the already expensive Scala tickets will. Just. Cost. More.

vvvvvvv HUGE ARTICLE UPDATE vvvvvvvv

Here's the round-up from the Italian news:

Il Giornale Below:

Il Giornale Below:

Corierre della Sera Below:

La Repubblica Below:

Comments

[Siris]

I suspect OC met Letizia @ one of those scudetto festa for Inter(owned by the Moratti clan) and unbeknown to Lissner, they became friends.

[deadtenors]

Karma is a funny thing. Perhaps you could hire a courtroom artist for this site. We, your supporters, could all pitch in to fund the venture. It would probably only need to be a three-day-a-week position. Imagining the moped is not the same as seeing it. Would the Italian army permit you to post an artist's impression of the moped?

[rompicolleone]

"What does it mean?" phew, that's The Stairs's karma coming back to it (in the same week, yet.)

[ellie]

Well one connection I can see is that La Scala actually DID feel threatened by another site with their logo...seemingly their status is being threatened from all sides (not that I think the OC logo should be considered a real threat). It seems like Lissner is going after the wrong targets. His main concern should be maintaining order and unity in the house, something which it had under Muti until things (unfortunately) hit the fan. What does Lissner know about Italian politics?

[Crewmantle]

Ya know..... I've been loitering around this site for a while and from the beginning I have had this sense that Opera Chic is connected to Milan in mysterious ways. I recall the interview with the lawyer of Little Mr. Nobody Tenor right in the midst of the imbroglio..who could get that close?? Would she know La Moratti the mayor of Milan? Or other empowered council members? She is a woman who does lunch...so it would not surprise me. Opera Chic just knows things b4 they happen.....

The Milanese theater which has lost such significant funding will be obliged to trim back its over recompensed, bloated white collar staff (A state of affairs which would have remained unknown to us all had it not been put front and center by this blog).
Ticket price hikes won't work with this one given the magnitude of the cut, so there will be few options. Salary roll backs? I think not..rather watch the backstabbing that will be going on in those corridors as beying sycophants try to hold on to their gilded positions.

Perhaps we might see some of the legal team dispensed with? Or what about the moronic marketing staff??