White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 1313.4. Italian opera houses:income and expensesBecause of their inefficient productionstructure, the inflexibility of humanresources and the low level ofentrepreneurship, the fondazioni liriche(opera house foundations) reflect thestagnancy of a model no longer suited tothe cultural, social and economic contextin which they operate. Other opera andlive performing arts organisations aregradually attempting to abandon thismodel in favour of foundations withvarious shareholders. Althoughmaintaining its impact, as highlighted bythe use of classical and opera music inadvertising and able to establish linksupstream and downstream with marketsof various technologies, opening up verylarge secondary markets, opera still isunable to completely abandon its 19thcenturymodel, more for reasons ofcultural resistance than on the groundsof the practical requirements forcreativity and performing. And evenwhen confronted with innovative signalsfrom abroad, new experiments in Italyare fairly limited. Among them, we cancite a production of Don Giovanni stagedby the Piccolo Teatro, Milan (notsurprisingly not an opera house but adrama theatre?) and the Festival of Aixen-Provence,at which an opera wasproduced at least partly according to thephilosophy of the long-running showwith a company of young musicians andsingers. We must also bear in mind thecreative vitality of many small and tinytheatres which, free of the institutionaland financial restraints besetting thelarge foundations, are able to innovateby staging little-known operas andcourageous productions with emergingartists.The following figures show a summaryof the budget structure of the 13 largestItalian opera-orchestra foundations.Figure 13.1 – Income of Opera-Orchestra Foundations, 2006Tickets and seasontickets 13,1%Adv and sponsorships1.7%Outsideperformances 2.6%Radio and TVbroadcasts – 0.4%Other revenues 6%Private andinstitutionalcontributions 7.3%City funding 10.6%Provincial funding1,7%Regional funding10,3%Ministry for theHeritage and CulturalActivities – 45.7%WHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 304