Canadian director accuses Philharmonie de Paris of bad faith
mainXavier Dolan was due to appear at a Philharmonie event in December.
He has now published an open letter on Twitter saying he never agreed to the engagement: ‘I apologies to the audience for the false information… I leave it to you to explain my absence to people who bought tickets for the event and to justify your operating methods.’
He’s not happy.
This is not a unique situation, I must say. The International Double Reed Society (IDRS) duped me into registering for the conference some years ago by advertising that many top performers were playing there, while in reality those performers never agreed to appear in the first place.
Is this a common practice in the musical world?
The reason can be that classical music world has to plan much more in advance, than pop and movies world.
I can easily imagine, that the Philharmonie was negotiating either slowly or they were getting no answer from Dolan’s agent. Often the movie agents don’t care about deadlines: the fees in classical world are ridiculous in comparison with movie-budgets, so they wait and not confirm, waiting whether a more lucrative project pops up.
On the other hand in classical world it would be common and normal – to get the principal agreement that the singer AZ takes part in the production and then negotiate the contract and to publish the name having only the confirmation mail. It may take months till the paper contract gets signed. This kind is very common and accepted in classical world, but is a no-go elsewhere…