Belgian Opera House Copes With Cuts
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/arts/international/belgian-opera-house-copes-with-cuts.html?ref=international
The Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels was having a good year.
Philippe Boesmans’s new opera “Au Monde,” based on a play about a dysfunctional family by Joël Pommerat, scored a hit in March. Romeo Castellucci’s radical production of Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice,” in which a Euridice double lies comatose in a hospital bed, intrigued audiences while incensing some critics in June. A new production of Strauss’s “Daphne” by Guy Joosten opened the current season in September with Sally Matthews heading a strong cast.
Then two things, both unexpected and both potentially threatening, happened to the theater, which is one of Europe’s best run and most innovative opera companies.
First, the new Belgian federal coalition government announced, within days of its formation in October, deep funding cuts as part of an effort to balance the budget. As proposed, the cuts would have required the Monnaie to trim personnel expenses by 4 percent and operating expenses by 20 percent as of Jan. 1, 2015, with further cuts in operating expenses at the rate of 2 percent a year through 2019. The Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported the government’s decision under the headline “The Murder of Federal Culture.”
That the cuts came without warning and with little time to implement them was especially irksome to the Monnaie’s general and artistic director, Peter de Caluwe. Reached by telephone this month a day after the theater’s latest premiere, a production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” by the Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski, Mr. de Caluwe criticized the “inelegant and undiplomatic” way the cuts were announced, but added that it was the substance that really hurt.
Then, on Dec. 12, another shoe fell. The French conductor Ludovic Morlot, chief conductor of the Monnaie since 2012, announced his departure effective at the end of the year. In a statement, Mr. Morlot, 40, who is also music director of the Seattle Symphony, said, “I feel that the orchestra and I have not managed to reach a consensus on an artistic vision, and therefore, for the sake of their development as well as my own, I have made this decision to stand down.”
In this season of abrupt resignations by major conductors from European opera houses — Franz Welser-Möst from the Vienna State Opera, Riccardo Muti from the Rome Opera and others from Italy — Mr. Morlot’s departure from the Monnaie deprives the theater of a rising talent and necessitates a search for replacements for his scheduled engagements. While he will conduct the remaining performances of “Don Giovanni” (through Dec. 30) he was also scheduled to conduct Pascal Dusapin’s “Penthesilea” in March and April.
“Although I very much regret this situation, I respect Ludovic Morlot’s decision to make this radical change to his future plans,” Mr. de Caluwe said in a statement. Mr. Morlot, for his part, said he was “deeply grateful” to have had “the opportunity to be part of such a vibrant, challenging and creative institution.”
The Monnaie (De Munt in Dutch) is one of only three cultural institutions under the control of the Belgian federal government; the others are the National Orchestra and the Center for Fine Arts. Other institutions fall under the domain of either the Dutch-speaking region in the north or the French-speaking region in the south.
As measured against its annual budget of 47.5 million euros, or $59 million, the theater puts on a significant number of high-quality performances. This season it will give 90 performances of 10 staged operas, two of them — in a sign of the theater’s commitment to new works — world premieres: “Shell Shock” by Nicholas Lens, with a libretto by the singer and poet Nick Cave, and “Penthesilea.” Six other productions are new or new to the theater. For 2015 the annual budget will be €44.5 million.
The Monnaie has already experienced enforced belt-tightening since the economic downturn began in 2008. “Taking into account cuts made during the previous five years, we will experience a reduction of 30 percent in the space of 10 years,” Mr. de Caluwe said. “It’s as if we’re being punished again.” The theater has already reduced personnel by 15 percent, he said, and those who remain have been “extraordinarily understanding in accepting wage freezes.”
The Monnaie has a well-earned reputation for teamwork, musical excellence and theatrical boldness. Few other major operas houses, and probably none outside Germany, can match the Monnaie’s cutting-edge production style.
The theater’s reputation for excellence traces back to the 1980s, when the late Gérard Mortier ran the theater. Among the many world premieres during his regime was that of John Adams’s “The Death of Klinghoffer” in 1991. After Mortier departed the following year to become artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, standards were kept high by his successor, Bernard Foccroulle. Mr. de Caluwe, 51, succeeded Mr. Foccroulle in 2007.
Breaking the mold is in the theater’s DNA. Founded in 1700 on the site of what was the national mint, the theater was, in 1830, the site of one of the most consequential performances in opera history: Auber’s “La Muette de Portici,” about a Neapolitan fisherman who led a revolt against the Spanish Viceroy, set off riots that precipitated the revolution of that year.
Nowadays, the theater’s capacity to incite comes principally from the boldness of its directors, with the new “Don Giovanni” as a case in point. Reportedly influenced by “Shame,” Steve McQueen’s film about a sex addict, the production is apparently so explicit that the theater’s website warns that it is not intended for those under 16. The cheers at final curtain at the opening were mixed with boos, though reviews praised Mr. Morlot’s performance.
“It was not really a scandal and went down quite well,” Mr. de Caluwe said. “If you modernize it, people will see in Don Giovanni a figure they can recognize. He is so sexually dependent it is killing him, and in our society we have to deal with this.” Monnaie audiences apparently understand: All 13 performances are sold out.
Productions by Mr. Warlikowski, who has also staged Verdi’s “Macbeth,” Cherubini’s “Médée” and Berg’s “Lulu” at the theater, generally allow an opera’s story to unfold recognizably, albeit amidst trappings that may seem tangential. Stefan Herheim, who staged Dvorak’s “Rusalka,” is apt to have the action play out “in a parallel world,” Mr. de Caluwe said.
An especially memorable recent revival of a rarity was Meyerbeer’s “Les Huguenots” staged by Olivier Py and conducted by Marc Minkowski, who was also the conductor for Dmitri Tcherniakov’s intriguingly intimate take on Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.” In addition to “Orfeo,” the theater gave a boost to Mr. Castellucci’s opera career with Wagner’s “Parsifal,” conducted by Hartmut Haenchen, which also drew strong reactions, both positive and negative.
The theater itself is a neo-classical building completed in 1819 with an auditorium rebuilt in an eclectic French and Italian style following a fire in 1855. It lacks modern features such as multiple stages. “We will always be a 19th-century theater,” Mr. de Caluwe said. “Occasionally, the limitations will work against a given work, but usually we can be creative in different ways.” The theater has not shied away from Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, which was seen in a memorable production by Herbert Wernicke using a single set.
With just 1,150 seats, La Monnaie’s intimacy is a boon to its audience but a constraint on ticket revenues. Currently, €34.5 million of the theater’s budget comes from the federal government (amounts from the city are negligible), a figure that will be reduced to €33.2 million next year, with other amounts coming from ticket sales (€6.9 million), sponsors and fundraising (€2.3 million) and income from co-productions and rentals (€2 million).
The amount of next year’s subsidy reflects an element of good news: Responding to the popular outcry, the government decided to exempt cultural institutions from the across-the-board reductions applicable to all administrative institutions. The cuts at the Monnaie have therefore become “slightly milder,” Mr. de Caluwe said. Also helpful is that expenditures made specifically for artistic purposes are not included in operating expenses.
Much about the theater’s financial future and the implementation of cuts remains undecided. But on Dec. 16 the theater announced preliminary measures it expects to take. These include eliminating 16 jobs, replacing a fully staged production scheduled for December with a semi-staged one, reducing its dance productions to one per year and canceling several concerts. Educational programs will remain in place. The reduction in dance further distances the theater from a tradition there to which Maurice Béjart and Mark Morris made important contributions
An opportunity would seem to exist for increasing contributions from sponsors and individuals, but Mr. de Caluwe fears that not enough can be raised to bridge the gap, in part because Europe remains slow to recover from the financial downturn. Besides, he adds, a culture of giving “is not in our genes, and tax laws don’t encourage it.”
One potential bright spot is a possible merger of the Monnaie’s orchestra with the National Orchestra. “Because 27 percent of the players of the two orchestras will soon be eligible for pensions,” Mr. de Caluwe said, “we could have an orchestra of 130 without firing people.”
In any case, he acknowledged that the theater would have to do more with less. “But we will also be forced to produce less,” he said.
La Monnaie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Monnaie
Royal Monnaie Theatre
http://www.brusselsmuseums.be/en/museum/104-royal-monnaie-theatre
Guided tour of la Monnaie
http://www.brusselsmuseums.be/en/activ.php?id=2374
photos
https://www.google.hr/search?q=the+Monnaie&client=opera&sa=N&biw=931&bih=575&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=58upVJjzKsHzPOqugJAB&ved=0CD0QsAQ4Cg
Peter de Caluwe
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_de_Caluwe
photos
https://www.google.hr/search?q=Peter+de+Caluwe&client=opera&hs=NTw&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=RMypVP2SKsThO5zCgZAG&ved=0CBwQsAQ&biw=931&bih=575
Klassikzeit: Interview mit Peter De Caluwe
http://brf.be/brf1/klassikzeit/360498/
Peter de Caluwe & Paul Dujardin, doctores honoris causa at the ULB
Fr 19 September 2014
The Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) has honoured General director of La Monnaie Peter de Caluwe and Paul Dujardin, Director of Bozar with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa.
http://www.lamonnaie.be/en/news/66/Peter-de-Caluwe-Paul-Dujardin-doctores-honoris-causa-at-the-ULB
January
http://www.lamonnaie.be/en/agenda/Calendar