Pereira under fire for loading company credit card

Pereira under fire for loading company credit card

News

norman lebrecht

May 26, 2022

The Florence Maggio Musicale manager Alexander Pereira is under fire from politicians for allegedly spending company funds on personal luxuries.

Pereira, former boss at Zurich Opera, the Salzburg Festival and La Scala, attracts heat wherever he goes.

In Florence he is accused of spending 14,000 euros in four months on restaurants in Ibiza, a Berlin auction house and personal accounts at local fishmongers, butchers and bakeries.

Pereira says he likes to cook at home for professional guests: ‘What is not mentioned … is the increase in private contributions to the Maggio received thanks to fundraising through my contacts, 7.5 million in 2021 after 4 million in 2020 and 2.5 million in 2019. I’ve tripled the previous amount and I say it with pride. Expenditures? No, these are actually necessary investments.’

Comments

  • Pianofortissimo says:

    I love mathematics.

  • alexis piantedoux says:

    Pereira should mention also if the costs increased in his tenure at Maggio in Florence , and if yes then we should evaluate if he was as good as he think he is.

  • OperaPulse says:

    Gotta spend money to make money

  • unwoken says:

    Thanks to his successful fundraising, I hope that he gave himself a raise as well.

  • guest says:

    ‘Pereira says he likes to cook at home for _professional_ guests’

    What _profession_ would that be? Is donor a profession these days? People in the classical music business aren’t best known for donating money, they are best known for being at the receiving end of the donation. Very few music professionals donate substantial sums of money out of their private pocket.

    • unwoken says:

      Maybe professional guests are people that hire themselves out to be somebody’s guest at a party. They can pretend to be anybody, in any social class, and/or occupation. If you mix professional guests with real guests, they could have a substantial influence over the real guests, depending on what the host’s reason for having them all there are. Or, maybe the host doesn’t have any real friends, or doesn’t want his real friends there, so he hires a pro guest. I’ve heard that many actors do pro guesting on the side to make a bit of extra cash, or to be a part of the hoity toity.

    • V.Lind says:

      I know quite a few who do. They are all a the top of their professions and earning well, and I suppose if they are not generous by nature they feel they would look bad if they did not donate to the foundations run for their orchestras. But when it comes to fund-raising, motive does not matter.

  • Venom says:

    Who is the Medusa standing next to him in the photo?

  • Tiredoditall says:

    He does look well fed.

  • torches and pitchforks says:

    This is the man who so resented #MeToo that he hired Levine, Gatti, and Domingo to express his resentment. I hate to think of the sort of donors Pereira is courting with his extravagances and how that affects the image of opera in social democratic Italy. The Italians should trot him back to Austria.

  • Henry williams says:

    At his age is he still short of money.

  • Fritz Müller says:

    Alexander Pereira is the best General manager❤️ No opera Intendant collects as much sponsorship money as Pereira!!! The criticism comes from right-wing politicians who want to cut subsidies for opera and classical music…

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