An opera run like a utility
If you read a daily political newspaper, you are one of a small minority that continues to do so. Statistically speaking, this means that nine in 10 Greeks (in the best-case scenario) are ignorant of the fact that early last week the Greek National Opera’s artistic director, Stephanos Lazaridis, was sacked from his post. They don’t know this and probably never will. We are well aware that the administrative matters of a cultural organization are hardly a riveting subject. Developments of this nature are rarely «juicy.» Their force is exhausted through personal conflicts and intrigues befitting of a medieval court. However, the crisis in the leadership of the GNO is not such a case. Firstly, it represents one of the few times an artistic director has been sacked for a reason not related to art. We all know Lazaridis to be an exceptionally successful director. Thanks to him, the GNO, one of the most bureaucratically mired, sluggish and outdated cultural institutions in Greece, has progressed by leaps and bounds in just a year. Many confine the extent of change merely to the surface, to the avant-garde performances presented by the organization this past season – though this is not an insignificant change in such a short space of time. For his second year, Lazaridis had planned to revamp the GNO’s administration. But eventually he didn’t have the opportunity. Irrespective of the official or unofficial reasons behind the board’s decision to sack the artistic director, divorce seemed inevitable for reasons that go far beyond the GNO’s headquarters at the Olympia Theater on Academias Street. The legal status of the GNO, just like all state cultural organizations, is that of a public entity. In effect, this means that they are subject to the same rules and regulations as the civil service. Administratively, the GNO, like the National Gallery or the National Archaeological Museum, is run in much the same way as the water company EYDAP. The staff of the GNO are generally considered to be immovable from their posts. The choir, the ballet and the tenor are all civil servants. Regardless of whether they do a good job or not, they cannot be shifted. The same goes for all other such organizations in Greece. Today, the GNO has a staff of 650, while the famed Lyon Opera employs just 330 annually to meet its production needs. And if at EYDAP the problem is not so bad (which it is), just imagine the consequences of such an outdated statist model in the domain of culture. Imagine the limited scope Lazaridis had to bring about real change under such circumstances. Imagine the challenge to and frame of mind of an artist who knows there is no need to improve in order to hold on to a job. Imagine a government, of the center right, that dares not discuss the blatantly obvious.
