White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 13Even after their recent transformationinto “foundations” regulated by privatelaw, opera houses continue to be mainlyfinanced with public funds and to begoverned by the local Mayor, who is bystatute the chairman of the board ofdirectors. Moreover, they areconditioned by very influential – albeitoften obsolete and unjustified – unionactivities and the agencies representingsingers which create restraints, despitenot being formally recognised by Italianlaw.In this environment hostile toinnovation, however, there are manyexamples of creativity, found throughoutall the sectors in the long operaproduction chain. From the conductorto the stage director, and the stage andcostume designers, as well as thosetechnical departments required toprovide practical solutions so all theseforms of creativity are expressed on thestage, opera tends to be enhanced by aprocess of reinterpretation which couldradically innovate each production stage.We must, however, point out that apartfrom fairly frequent but individual,occasional cases, the opera system inItaly appears to be static andconservative.Creativity as a source of new expressiveand interpretative approaches is oftencontrasted by the recourse to lavishnessand a tendency to elephantiasis in anequation making quality as perceived byaudiences a function of the scale ofspending. This is a very debatablelogic. lxxv If we look at the range of titleseach season, or the conductors andsingers engaged, we find the same namesrecur. On one hand, opera houses thusshow a strong aversion to risk and preferto rely on the taste of consolidatedaudiences (season ticket-holders andregular opera-goers) and the approval ofthe public sector which finances them.On the other hand, believing they haveto compete, especially as regards theallocation of public funds, they tend notto stray far from mainstreamprogrammes, which in any case tend toreassure the commissions and the publicbureaucrats. At the same time, the castsengaged are seen as a sign of quality, andthis ends up limiting the choice ofconductors and singers to the mosthighly “quoted” big national andinternational names, in a classificationmainly decreed by the agencies.This has led to the paradox of a muchmore limited range of works beingperformed in Italy than in otherEuropean countries and in the UnitedStates as well as a striking reluctance toinnovate and greater barriers in terms ofopportunities for young opera singers atthe beginning of their careers. Thecritical relationship between externalfunding and its influence on the subjectfunded demonstrates that public supportbased on evaluations of quality leads to ashrinking in the range of the supply,whereas the prevalence of greater privatefunding, typical of other advancedcountries, encourages diversification andproductive innovation. lxxvi The followingtable shows a summary of a comparisonbetween Italy and Germany, highlightingthe smaller size and lack ofdiversification and innovation of operasupply in Italy.WHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 302