And to shorten the season, to perform in concert and in various (very much) smaller venues has the opera world up in arms.....
starting with Julius Rudel, former NYCO Maestro, and followed by other opera luminaries
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/opinion/07rudel.html?_r=1&hpw
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/arts/music/domingo-and-carreras-protest-city-operas-move.html?_r=1
It IS a sad state of affairs.
Wherever one looks the arts get short shrift by government. and not only here but around the continent:
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2011/jul/07/national-group-asks-federal-government-pull-fundin/
http://stopbcartscuts.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/the-2010-bc-budget-effectively-cut-50-from-arts-funding/
The arts would be dead were it not for private donations.
But those funds are also not as plenty due to the economy... so what to do?
Allow each large city ONE art company and one only?
I am kidding - or not?
But..
what about sports?
I suggest the same in sports such as in ONE team per city!
How that would fly :-) what a thought!
Deprive the masses of their sports teams to love and hate!
Roman politicians devised a plan in 140 B.C. to win the votes of the poor by giving out cheap food and entertainment - "panem et circenses" = bread and circuses".
'Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt'
is what the Roman poet Juvenal wrote in his 'Satires'
lamenting the continuing slide of his former Roman Republic into dictatorship.
Even if food and tickets are no longer cheap!
Let us have "circuses"!
