Music: Crisis in Italy

• Share

For a production of Aida, the Rome Opera puts onstage 600 people, plus two chariots drawn by six horses each, plus two camels. For a production of Donizetti's Poliuto, it mustered 1,200 people and two lions. Such habits have saddled Italian opera companies with groaning annual deficits, which in recent history have been paid by the government. For weeks now, politicians, newspapers and plain opera lovers have been raising shrill voices in protest against a proposed cut in government opera subsidies.

In 1951 the government fixed the subsidy for Italy's twelve major opera houses* at 15% of all Italy's entertainment tax receipts (eleven lesser opera companies were granted a smaller percentage). By 1955, this had boosted the annual opera packet to $6,000,000. Last fall the government announced that it would press for a law establishing the subsidy at a flat $4,000,000 yearly. This would not affect the music, said economy-minded Budget Minister Adone Zoli, but would merely curtail extravagant choreographic and scenic effects.

Fired? We'll Strike. As the proposal slowly ground through parliamentary machinery, virtually every musician and official of an opera-owning town began to berate the government. In Naples and Milan, the ballet troupes, orchestras and choral singers threatened with fine Italian logic to strike if they were fired. Opera leaders predicted the imminent closing of La Scala and other houses for lack of funds. Government opponents in the Senate feared a loss of tourist trade. (Said one opera stage director: "Tourists come to Italy to see the Pope, the Colosseum and opera. Next they'll tear down the Colosseum to make a parking lot.") The Communist paper L'Unitaá meanwhile played the story as the tragedy of the poor workingman forced to foot the bills for "the luxuries and extravagances" of opera stars paid $1,500 a performance (actually a lot less than was paid 30 years ago). Tenor Mario Del Monaco volunteered to accept a pay cut "if other singers will do likewise." There were no takers, but one blunt comment from Soprano Maria Meneghini Callas: "La Scala can close down as far as I am concerned; I will never lack for a stage."

No Audit in Paradise. The real issue was not top talent or a top house like La Scala. Virtually all opera companies outside the U.S. are publicly subsidized (London's Covent Garden gets $700,000 annually). La Scala's $1,200,000 subsidy is not out of line considering its box-office take of $2,000,000 and its ambitious program: 180 annual performances of 30 different operas, including eight new productions and four premiered works, plus concerts and ballets. More extravagant was the $1,200,000 subsidy to the Rome Opera in 1955, when it took in only $600,000 at the box office, or the $1,000,000 to the San Carlo Opera with only $300,000 in ticket sales. Despite the low box office, such houses are usually full because of cheap seats (40¢) and privileged spectators—politicians, functionaries, war wounded, pregnant women—who get in at cut rates or free.