FFinally, our only opera house — or whoever runs it — should feel good. They don’t have to plan an opera season, they go to the rubbish bin and recycle an operetta with a revised libretto and poor staging for Porto, they promise a “Jenufa” for March, and ask the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra and the Choir of the National Theater of São Carlos to provide proof of life. The obvious solution was to organize an opera season at the CCB — also under the supervision of the State — but “in Portugal, the obvious thing is that it is difficult” (in the eternal words of a great writer). The disaster is total. They didn’t know how to choose an artistic director in a pseudo-international competition (with a national jury bringing together the usual suspects and just one musicologist), and now they’re in trouble tour with the house can. I know that the euros are not enough to send a blind person to sing, in a theater bloated with staff that produces little. Just compare it to the times when they presented seven or eight titles per season, with great international singers and directors. Finally, the ‘Portuguese problem’ in action: a national institution handed over to “an oligarchic-parasitic regime (…) where groups of individuals pursue their interests to the detriment of the general interests” of the country, as defined by the historian, essayist and professor Augusto Reis Machado, nephew of the notable composer Augusto Machado, author of “Maria da Fonte” (mistreated by São Carlos).
Source: expresso.pt
