The Arts Are Shunning Big Oil. The Salzburg Festival Isn’t.

As some institutions shy away from oil and gas money, the prestigious music event has a new sponsor:

October 21, 2019

Activists in Paris made handprints in molasses on the glass pyramid at the Louvre to protest the museum’s funding from a large energy company.CreditCharles Platiau/Reuters

"LONDON — In July, the opera director Peter Sellars gave a stark speech about climate change to open the Salzburg Festival in Austria, one of classical music’s most glittering events.

“We are today facing leadership across the world,” he said, “that is willing to sacrifice the next generation and the generations after that.” People everywhere, he added, had to “shift out of bad habit energies and make basic, common-sense changes in our lives.”

That night, he unveiled his new production of “Idomeneo,” which turned Mozart’s opera into a climate change parable and featured a dancer from Kiribati, an island nation threatened by rising sea levels.

Less than three months later, on Oct. 3, Helga Rabl-Stadler, the festival’s president, traveled to St. Petersburg to sign a new sponsorship deal with Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, and OMV, an Austrian oil and gas firm. The companies will each pay 200,000 euros (about $220,000) toward staging a Russian opera at next year’s festival."— Alex Marshall, Oct. 21, 2019

This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the New York Times website.

Stay engaged. Use #UCLAarts to stay connected.