Breaking: Major French festival shuts down
mainThe Festival d’Ile-de-France, founded in 1976 and featuring more than 30 concerts in various locations, is no more.
The autumn festival has been facing difficulties since the local authority cut its grant last December by 68 percent.
Like many French arts events, the festival is heavily dependent on public subsidy, in this case amounting to four-fifths of its total budget.
An appeal for public donations and sponsorship failed.
The festival today posted a closure notice.
Classical music is no longer considered relevant for today’s world. This is a break with an ages-long European tradition, that art is part of a nation’s cultural identity, of self-understanding.
The French use their subsidies these days for supporting huge numbers of immigrants, many of whom do not respect or even accept their host country’s culture, be it popular or classical music or anything related to it.
The left of course will be pleased: another elitist event gone.
Academics can waffle again about the wonderful world of ‘new forms of democratic music making’, the others won’t even know whats going on as they cannot tell the difference between the squeaking of a pig and a Beethoven symphony.
What do we get instead: mass culture and Anglo Saxon free market ideology, where anything that doesn’t create a profit is obsolete.
And people wonder why there is support for Le Pen….( though she won’t help either as the extreme right is as barmy as their left counterpart.)
You always word your thoughts to perfection, JB. I only hope they are mistaken in this case and that it is an exception.
Very true, JB. What a shame. And this in the heart of Europe, not in Wichita, Kansas (not that they would get art subsidies).