FIM

Following a two and a half hour long meet­ing, the Board of Directors of the Rome Opera House, chaired by the City Mayor [see pho­to], decid­ed on 2 October 2014 to dis­miss the institution’s 182 orches­tra musi­cians and choir mem­bers, at the same time lay­ing the blame on union rep­re­sen­ta­tives, guilty in their eyes of not hav­ing sub­scribed to the management’s and city’s cost-​cutting plan.

Although the plan had actu­al­ly been accept­ed by the major­i­ty of staff, man­age­ment jus­ti­fies its deci­sion by the fact that a cer­tain num­ber of musi­cians opposed it, insin­u­at­ing in addi­tion –with­out the slight­est proof– that the hasty depar­ture of con­duc­tor Ricardo Muti was appar­ent­ly attrib­ut­able to the musi­cians who had dared come out on strike to denounce the dete­ri­o­ra­tion in their work­ing conditions.

The deci­sion tak­en by the Opera House and the Rome City Hall with the sup­port of the Minister of Culture, con­sists in shed­ding all artis­tic jobs and sub­con­tract­ing them to a coop­er­a­tive which the artists would be encour­aged to cre­ate. According to Italian trade unions, this mod­el is thought to inter­est sev­en oth­er opera hous­es in the coun­try. Outsourcing musi­cians’ jobs would not only have the virtue of reliev­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of all social con­straints linked to their employ­ment con­tracts, but also place these musi­cians in com­pe­ti­tion with oth­er orches­tras, per­ma­nent or not, made up of salaried or self-​employed musi­cians, from Italy or oth­er parts of the world. When we know that the aver­age salary of musi­cians from cer­tain east­ern European Union orches­tras scarce­ly reach­es €200 a month, what a prospect of sav­ings on the back of musicians!

The super­in­ten­dent of the Rome Opera House has not hes­i­tat­ed to state pub­licly that this mea­sure, unprece­dent­ed in Italy, would only be repro­duc­ing a prac­tice that was cur­rent in oth­er European cap­i­tals such as Paris, London or Madrid. This is a sheer lie.

The International Federation of Musicians and its sis­ter fed­er­a­tions (International Federation of Actors and UNI MEI) rep­re­sent the pro­fes­sion­al inter­ests of work­ers in the per­form­ing arts at a glob­al lev­el. The three fed­er­a­tions oppose this mea­sure in the strongest terms. Beyond human dra­mas that such a change would inevitably entail, what is at stake is sim­ply the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of a musi­cal insti­tu­tion of inter­na­tion­al renown. Opera and sym­pho­ny music con­sti­tute a com­mon artis­tic her­itage that is both pre­cious and frag­ile, which sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of artists have con­tributed to build up and which we must be able to hand down to our chil­dren. Transforming great opera hous­es into back­wa­ter the­atres whose only voca­tion would be to host fleet­ing ensem­bles at cut-​price rates would con­sti­tute a seri­ous cul­tur­al regression.

We can­not accept that the Rome Opera House becomes the pro­to­type of a con­sumerist vision of the per­form­ing arts nor take the risk of see­ing this per­ni­cious con­cept spread through­out Europe and beyond.

On 13 October, IAEA pub­lished an open let­ter. For their part, musi­cians of the Rome Opera House have opened an online peti­tion which, on 19 October had already col­lect­ed 21,000 sig­na­tures. Finally, from 17 to 23 November 2014, FIM is organ­is­ing an International Orchestra Week dur­ing which var­i­ous awareness-​raising actions will be tak­ing place along­side con­certs and per­for­mances. To say no to cul­tur­al van­dal­ism, let’s sup­port these initiatives!