First, William Christie and Les Arts Florissants were stripped of 333,900 Euros by the city of Caen in September.
Now, Mark Minkowski and the Musiciens de Louvre are losing 438,000 from Grenoble.
Is France falling out of love with period instruments?
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It is probably more the painful review of priorities.
Jews flee the country, they’ve provided terrorists group with thousands of psychopaths in the Middle East – and now two of the finest ensembles are stripped. Yep, it’s France we’re talking about. Now a second-rate country.
Very wrong. Marc Minkowski is not your ordinary conductor, of any period.
Yes, I’m sure there are far more important priorities than the survival of two of the greatest Classical music ensembles in the world.
Such as maintaining a military and domestic police force? Paying for citizens’ health care? Ensuring industrial and farm safety? Offering assistance to the poor and hungry? Maybe even propping up other moribund industries that have more of an effect on the country’s GDP? Were you thinking of those things?
France is in incredible debt, still better of than the UK, the US or Japan, but still in terrible financial shape. At least they speak about it and are making cuts. The US is now 18 trillion dollars in debt and it’s business as usual, with not much talk of cuts, etc., only talk of an improving economy. That is called delusion and will have terrible consequences for the country and the world in general, when all of this blows up.
I am not surprised that the funding for the two ensembles mentioned in France are completely losing their generous state subsidies. They both have been around for a long time and are sufficiently well established to raise funding on their own. Sure, France doesn’t understand those sorts of initiatives very well, but perhaps now, with reality setting in, they must learn something that nearly every nation has long understood, namely fund raising and losing the addiction to the state being there for every financial worry. Only then will France modernise itself and break away from its centralised state mentality, which today is out of fashion and unrealistic.
The best way to fund cultural institutions like orchestras seems to be: the state provides a basic subsidy which ensures their existence, and additional sponsorship from the community which ensures their being directly related to that community.
The root of the current funding problems in the West of cultural institutions is not the lack of money, but the lack of understanding of the meaning of culture in the context of society as a whole. In times where the arts are increasingly seen as merely another type of entertainment and commodity, any intention to protect their contribution dwindles.
I agree wholeeartedly!
How stupid! These are the best musicians in the world in the field of early French opera. Where are they supposed to get money? From global corporations?
They are, and it would be very sad if they were to fold, though this is most unlikely. But local governments are elected and I fear most of their electors are not unduly concerned about baroque opera. All easier for Louis XIV, no problems about re-election.