The Mayor of Salzburg, Heinz Schaden, is unhappy that the summer festival is running five million Euros over its 60 million budget.
The response from festival director, Alexander Pereira, was to go nuclear and threaten a walkout. He pointed out to the mayor that the hot seat in La Scala will fall vacant next year when Stephane Lissner moves to Paris. He was thinking of applying.
We hope he will. This is definitely a bluff worth calling.
€65.000.000 out of everybody’s pockets for such an elitist festival is outrageous.
That’s not how the festival is financed. About half of it actually comes from ticket sales, some comes from sponsors and other supporters, about 10m Euro or a little more from the tax payers but the festival does bring a lot of money back into the city, so that kind of evens out. Still, it is important for the festival manager to keep costs under control, not just go over budget and then throw a tantrum threatening to walk out if the money isn’t put up.
Dunno if that is such a good idea for him to move to Italy. If there is one thing that they have to learn in Italy, it is to stay within budget. If he can’t stay within a $60m (!!!) Euro budget, then maybe he is not the right man for Salzburg either. If he wants to go over budget, then it is up to him to find additional sponsors, not just to hold his hand out and expect the tax payers to fill it.
I really love these Salzburg cabals. The entertainment factor even beats those from Bayreuth.
You couldn’t have said it better! This definitely is a bluff worth calling and I sincerely hope that the mayor of Salzburg puts this arrogant man out of his job. Alexander Pereira, who I have seen speaking once, is a pretentious, pompous creature signifying everything that is wrong with the elitist classical music world. He has to realise that he is running a ‘business’ and he has spent 65 million Euros to keep the elite and a few less elite happy and pampered at the most elitist music festival there could ever be. 65 million Euros!!! And the 60 million that he had at his disposal wasn’t enough, so he spent another 5 million that he didn’t have and now he has a temper tantrum when he is called to task for his poor oversight and threatens to leave for a job that is not even been offered to him officially! These sorts of people operating like this in these difficult times, where endless orchestras are closing, great musicians struggling and festivals having to reduce their budgets, doesn’t have any connection to reality and should be thrown out, no matter what he threatens to do. Perreira does more harm to classical music and its elitist closed society image than anything else.
Sorry, Alexander Pereira is an excellent manager and artistic director who took Zurich from mediocrity to the first level. The city of Salzburg benefits year-round from the Festival and its off shoots, Pereira is not in any way a snob but he does hold to the high standards set by the Festival’s founders. There are few men of Pereira’s talent available as Salzburg found out when they replaced Gerard Mortier with mediocrities !
I’m sure Pereira would be very welcome at La Scala, certainly I would be glad to see him there, but until now people here in Milan were worried that it wouldn’t really have been in his best interest to accept. If because of problems in Salzburg that is no longer the case, so much the better!!!!