Opera boss is ousted
OperaItaly’s rightwing government has passed a law requiring public officials to leave office when they turn 70.
The law takes effect on June 10. The first head to roll will be that of Stéphane Lissner, sovrintendente of San Carlo in Naples.
The incoming law may also have affected Alexander Pereira’s recent departure from the Maggio Musicale in Florence.
The Meloni regime is keen to stack arts positions with its supporters.
Lissner, 70 since January, is a former head of Paris Opéra.
Although I do not like to see people lose their jobs I reckon that Giorgia Meloni has a lot of very good ideas. Most of us are fed up with all these lily-livered politicians.
Her role model had some good ideas mixed in with his many thoroughly noxious ones…
Never mind the fact that younger people will never get a chance if people continue in positions into their seventies and eighties. And Clientissimo is a way of life in Italy. It’s no one party’s thing
Call it ‘affirmative action’ for the elderly, if you like!
What’s good enough for the goose…
How true.
Georgia Meloni just gets better and better. How Lissner ever managed to secure the jobs he’s had is surely not a mystery only to me.
How? i don’t have any idea.
Giorgia. Sorry.
Lissner has just unveiled a new season – one of the world’s best operatic seasons of 2023 – 2024 and will be stripped of his post as a result.
Italy is a pathetic place.
Let them manage themselves their theaters, like the fascist Gasdia in Verona, endlessly staging the same five operas, in Zeffirelli productions, of course, because there is never enough their own, homegrown, italian kitsch.
For years I’ve avoided this grotesque little country whose only attraction are its monuments, most of which are so run-down that they will soon fall apart. Maybe they’re too old for the Italian government to have them restored.
much hatred great honour hope you feel better now
Italy has fifty-eight UNESCO World Heritage sites. How could any national government maintain all of those to an acceptable standard while having to run the country?
Well, the greater prize here is leadership over RAI, where there is now a PD/M5S nominee (Fuortes) running things who used to lead Opera di Roma and who will probably have eyes on La Scala. But that position won’t be available – also because the centre-left mayor of Milan who has something to say over La Scala wants Fuortes to keep the RAI position and thus hinder the Meloni policy – so the govt ousts the San Carlo leadership and replace it with Fuortes, thus clearing the way for Roberto Sergio at RAI. Italy in a nutshell.
Orchestras in Germany have a retirement age limit too. Knew someone who played in one and it was lower than 70.
In France you have to go at 65 : Jerome Savary was unhappy to leave the Opera Comique, where he did a great job, purely because he was a state employee…
And look what has happened there since then
I’m not certain, but I think Italy has long had a mandatory retirement age, but that exceptions can be made for people in high administrative positions. The Meloni government has taken an extreme nationalist stance in the arts which might come to a purging of foreigners in an Italian classical music world that is already one of the most insular and parochial in Europe.
The pendulum is moving in the opposite direction. Finally!! And inevitably.
In US absolutely all positions are occupied by leftists. This law would not help nada.
Just to clarify. People who live on the public payroll are almost always of the political Left.
Yup, the privileged elite with nothing to fear. Loathsome.
If he had this law in America, we never would have been stuck with Trump! It also would have prevented Hillary from running!
You only got one because of the other!!
That’s a good law, giving others a chance at promotion.
In this case it also removes a man from running La Scala who was incapable of identifying bog standard operatic repertoire on TV.
Hpw, please , is an Opera administrator a “public official ” ?