Bucharest is paying a tenor six times as much as Vienna

Ioan Holender, the Romanian-born former head of the Vienna State Opera, has issued a stinging attack on the hapless administration at Bucharest National Opera.

Here’s what he says, in part:

I found out that [Beatrice Rancea, interim manager of BNO] paid  80.000€ to Roberto Alagna for singing two arias at a so called “Opera Gala”.

At Staatsoper Wien the maximum fee is 12.400€, while at La Scala, where Alagna is no longer invited, the fee is 15.000€. I don’t know how much she paid to the Mexican tenor Ramón Vargas – him too in his late autumn of his career – for his Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor, but his weak performance has been heard.

Holender goes on to criticise the ‘shameful’ forced departure of ballet chiefs Johan Kobborg and Alina Cojocaru and the failure of Andrei Șerban’s new production of  Lehar’s Merry Widow, running four and a half hours.

Read Holender’s full article here (in Romanian).