On World Opera Day, Italy goes dark for a month
mainThe Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte has announced the closure of all places of entertainment from tomorrow until November 24 at the earliest.
The heroic efforts made by La Scala and other houses to restore a sembalnce of normality have been defeated by rising Covid numbers.
Artists are being cancelled, orchestras sent home.
We have gone back to the dark ages.
very sad indeed!!!!
What did anyone think was going to happen? And do you think somehow the season will just start up on 24th November? No chance. These are the last little gasps of activity before the real shutdown.
All this over the scourge propagated in a little Chinese town now allowed to dictate the workings of the whole world.
Little Chinese town? Wuhan has a population of some 11 million.
Not anymore…
Unfortunately, I think you’re probably right about that.
Sad days indeed.
Surely opera is more than just ‘entertainment’ in Italy ! ?
Let us all go to Bolshoi then and continue the “heroic” fight against the virus along with the senile Domingo , the Netrebkos and their ilk.( What a disgustingly manipulative rhetoric …)
Weep for the classical music “warriors”, the same famous nababs in the business , who are bleeding on the last operatic battlefields of the Western world at the moment and are ready to announce some huge cultural catastrophe ( that doesn t regard their bank accounts whatsoever).
“We have gone back to the dark ages.”
I beg to differ.
The Dark Ages, to the questionable extent of their historical reality, appear as periods when ignorance, superstition and unwarranted faith in religious practices prevailed against what little knowledge, insight, and evidence-based reasoning was available.
There is plenty of the Dark Ages in present-day covidiots.
On the other hand, closing down venues of public gathering at the height of an exponentially growing pandemic is, according to the evidence currently available, a sensible and urgent measure. Would that it had been taken much sooner, much more decisively, much more thoroughly. This measure is, according to currently available evidence, the very opposite of a throwback to the Dark Ages. Our response is a question of civilisation.
Well my dear ol’ Křenek, one could say that shutting the city gates to keep out the unclean is indeed reminiscent of the dark ages. One could. One might also say that huddling in your cave like a frightened animal is not particularly civilized either. Yes, one might. Certainly not a brave scientician like yourself, I’m sure.
I just read the the New York City Ballet made a decision not to reopen until Sept 2021. They are joining the NY Philharmonic and the MET in this.
The inability of the West to shut down this virus is testimony of the limits of democracy: if you can’t save yourselves, how the hell do you intend to save “Humanity” writ large with you supposed “Enlightenment” ideas of “Freedom” and “Rights”?
Forget climate change, the greatest existential threat to Europeans is Europeans.
The human species will continue to evolve with just Asians and Africans.
Typical leftist negativity from those too dumb and afraid to move to China or Africa.
Your overt racism towards the West and Europeans is disgusting because you simply can’t compete.
Plus nobody EVER relies on Africa for either the commerce structure or intellect that China has. Nobody EVER wants to flee to communist China or primitive Africa. Those people choose America first or some other advanced European country since Israel throws them out.
No, those who actually believe that life is better in either China or Africa would have left Europe and the US in droves when Hillary lost. People like that are too uneducated and poor to follow through on their rants hence those who hysterically rioted instead. They couldn’t even manage Canada’s immigration standards!
Absolutely tragic. A life without opera is one not worth living!