www.newsweek.com: Last month, staff at Catania’s opera house staged a funeral in suitably operatic fashion, carrying a coffin through the center of the packed auditorium. The performance wasn’t a dramatic staging idea: it was a funeral for the opera house itself.
That’s because this stunning house, where opera has been performed since the late 1800s, is in deep financial trouble. The Teatro Massimo Bellini – named after the Sicilian city’s most famous son, the bel canto opera composer Vincenzo Bellini – can’t afford to pay visiting artists or even its own musicians.
At a recent international opera competition, the orchestra went on strike between the semifinals and the finals, reportedly because its members hadn’t been paid for months.
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