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!