Covent Garden dumps oil sponsor that drew young audiences
NewsIn a spectacular own goal, not untinged by hypocrisy, the Royal opera House has severed a 33-year relationship with the oil firm BP, following protests by climate activists.
The ROH said: ‘We are grateful to BP for their sponsorship over 33 years which has enabled thousands around the country to see free opera and ballet through our BP Big Screens.’
Exactly. No company has done more than BP to bring more new faces to oepra.
And: ‘Over the last three years, BP’s support has focused on sustainability initiatives, supporting the Royal Opera House’s recovery post-pandemic and supporting our drive towards net zero.’
All the more reason to dump BP, just as it helps to stop pollution.
This is a craven surrender to activism by woke and timim members of th ROH management.
Warning to prospective sponsors: Covent Garden will spt in your face.
So what does the ROH put in its trucks that move stage sets between the theatre, Purfleet and S Wales?
Tea?
Which raises a point: visibility.
There are no logos on fuel in a truck.
Why can’t sponsors just sponsor? Why can’t they fund arts organizations without bragging about it?
After all, from a marketing perspective there is precious little return on investment. Arts sponsorship always has been a laughably “inefficient” media buy.
Corporate executives get the seats and the tax breaks with or without the visibility. Those are what they care about.
And fewer “donor events” would help arts budgets too.
True philanthropy is anonymous.
How is a performance, or art in general, justified, climate-wise?
Can a vegan kill a lion trying to eat a bug?
Enlighten us, Greta “Garbo” Thunberg, how do you stop a VEI-8 volcano and the last asteroid doing it`s thing?
BP helps stop pollution in the same way Philip Morris fights nicotine addiction. Come on, this is a ridiculous statement.
point no. 1: The Met basically has a monopoly on live screened operas, no other company can possibly match up to their top quality streams which are accessible overseas. The ROH doesn’t really lose anything other than wasted efforts.
point no. 2: So what if it’s woke and lefty? For far too long the arts have been at the mercy of the corporations responsible for the destruction of our planet. They showered us with their gifts to keep us from revolting against them. It’s about time that one of the MAJOR PLAYERS in this industry took a stand and said “screw you, we don’t accept your dirty oil money, you can’t buy our silence.”
Point 3: if all of the above makes a couple of Tory-affiliates and Tory voters upset, all the better. Classical music is at its core an art of the working class, and nothing has done more to destroy its relevance than it being placed in the control of the bourgeoisie. The music will live on through those of us who love performing it, and we will find a way with or without your support. You don’t like our methods? Good riddance then!
“Classical music is at its core an art of the working class.” Well said, Tovarich.
Interestingly, Culture Unstained is stating that “despite the ROH being BP’s ‘longest-standing arts partner’, its sponsorship payment would not have covered the combined salaries of the ROH’s chief executive and musical director”.
This does show that BP’s sponsorship wasn’t that significant, but also that the salaries are probably too high.
I’ve long thought the top salaries in arts organisations are a complete cheek while they ask the most junior staff to live off 20k or less while working long hours.
I BET the young employees get to see a fair number of the ROH shows free which is worth a LOT!
Not that great to see a Giovanni for free when you barely can afford to live in the city. Also not great that the musicians playing the actual music are getting paid peanuts and *gasp* also can’t afford to live in the city.
1. What do you call ‘peanuts’? (References please)
2. What do call ‘the city’?
1) getting a 43K salary in London is getting paid peanuts, especially when you consider the ratio of pay to the top earner within the ROH (who gets paid upwards of 800k). Pappano is earning effectively a double salary with a basic 115K a year + added compensation for each performance totalling to an extra odd 600K thrown on top. Musicians getting paid less than 10x the amount when they’re the ones actually making the sounds you enjoy and putting in the physical workload (not to mention staying IN PLAYING SHAPE BETWEEN CONCERTS) is an insult.
2) We’re talking about London.
Excellent commentary by Mr. Lebrecht. Thank you. Maybe they should use solar panels the next time they perform the magic fire music!
BP should be relieved no longer to be associated with a filthy, corrupt, exploitative business like the music industry.
Oh the Faustian bargains we covet. Sigh.
The real story is the lack of state support for the dying arts in the UK.
Oil money sponsorship, orchestras touring Saudi Arabia…hell, the unethical barrel has a very deep bottom to plumb.
Parsifal under 50 feet of melted ice cap…someone might monetise that, you never know.
At last.
Are you stepping in with you donations?
Exactly right! Maybe the climate activists will fill the void with their deep pockets? What an insanity, the management has no balls at all.
Ah, my beloved Britain. Never backwards in following a brainless trend.
This makes me think of the far-left sociopaths who’ve harangued author JK Rowling (herself quite liberal too) for merely stating that humans who give birth to children are known as women/female. The world’s post-Mao brigade is now actively trying to sabotage the sales of a new Harry Potter video game.
How to kill an organization and its jobs in one mental disordered woke step. The organization deserves the death that will now come to it.
You’re talking about the death of BP, right? If “one […] woke step” achieves that, it would be far more deserved, for BP’s denial of and misleading the world about the effects of its product on climate change.
“Surrender to activism”?! How about “an acceptance of a changing world that is worth saving through making change”?
Biting the hand that feeds them! Where are they going to get their money from now? Arts Council?
You don’t think that ROH has severed links with BP…
… because it’s found a replacement sponsor? Give it a couple of weeks and NL will be celebrating the money coming from ANOther corporate.
After all, music managed to thrive despite its previous dependence on tobacco money – in the days when governments cared about firma using sponsorship as virtue-washing.
I’m glad I’m 81 years old, and not 25. “Après moi, le déluge”.