Breaking: now Buenos Aires fires half its orchestra
mainThe city of Buenos Aires has fired half of the musicians in the Teatro Colon for going on strike over late payments.
The musicians, who won support last week from the visiting Placido Domingo and accompanied his concert for free, are taking their case to court. See here for details. And here for a softer version.
It is impossible to ignore parallels with the brutal dispute being played out in Brazil. Foreign artists and managers are starting to put both orchestras on an international blacklist.
It may be time for a consolidation of efforts throughout South America with a view toward galvanizing the classical music community into a group with cohesive and shared goals, objectives, and values. The notion of “Divide and conquer” is less easily attained by those who seek this condition when faced with unity and resolve in numbers. Anything short of a coming together in the face of these attacks is a mistake and one from which these musicians may never recover. We no longer live in a world where we are insulated by borders and unreasonable pride in nationalism. We live in a global arts community and can only begin to fend off these actions through this realization. This is made so obvious by the goings on in Brazil and this, I feel, is the only natural result of cohesion and the sharing of information from city to city, country to country and continent to continent. I will be following this latest assault with great concern and interest in the days and weeks to come.
Rob Weir
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
San Francisco, California
USA