SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Verdi, Falstaff -  The performance that never was:  Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of Teatro Colón. Conductor: Marco Guidarini, Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires. 30.11.2010. (JSJ)

Director/sets/lighting: Roberto Oswald

Costumes: Aníbal Lápiz

Chorus: Peter Burian

Children’s Chorus: César Bustamante

Cast:

Falstaff: Alberto Mastromarino

Mr. Ford: Vladimir Chmelo

Mrs. Alice Ford: Elena Pankratova

Nannetta: Fabiola Masino

Mrs. Quickly: Graciela Alperyn

Fenton: Darío Schmunck

Mrs. Page: María Luján Mirabelli

Dr. Cajus: Carlos Natale

Bardolfo: Gabriel Renaud

Pistola: Mario De Salvo

[Note. This is not so much a review as a report on the staffing problems recently plaguing the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. We hope  that it will be possible publish a review at some future date. Consulting Editor.]


The Teatro Colón’s final production of 2010, Falstaff, promised to bring the year of its reopening to a resounding and successful artistic conclusion. However, the opposite was the case with the labour issues that have been long simmering finally boiling over.

After an opening performance that almost hadn’t taken place and despite notices handed out to theatre-goers by workers committing themselves to dialogue with the authorities and requesting a minute of silence in support, an empty orchestra pit at the start time of the second performance for Falstaff didn’t bode well for the evening. Then after a delay of almost half an hour with the audience increasingly restive, the director general, Pedro Pablo García Caffi, appeared in front of the curtain to state – against interjections and insults from the auditorium, and to general dismay – that the production could not take place as a group of workers had taken over the stage.

The curtain was then opened on the Garter Inn and what was to be the last round of applause for the helpless and obviously bewildered cast, with the subsequent two performances also being cancelled (with a possible but unlikely reprogramming), as was the Philharmonic Orchestra’s last concert in that same week (and all functions subsequently).

According to García Caffi and statements issued by the Teatro Colón during the week a group of about 50 workers from the Association of State Workers union (one of two of which theatre employees are members) were responsible for the disruption – some of them also responsible for trying to prevent the opening function from taking place and for the cancellation of the last performance of the last but one production, Kátia Kabanová, in September. Having just signed an agreement with the City authorities to engage in dialogue, these workers were now attempting to halt the Colón’s activities through blackmail.

For their part the workers have not clearly spelt out to the public their side of the issue, but it is no secret that there is considerable unhappiness over working conditions – much of which occurs off-site – and salaries. Further as a City-funded institution, politics runs deep in the Teatro Colón.

From an artistic perspective this is a sad ending to what should have been a memorable year. For many porteños, for whom worker disruptions are an almost daily fact of life, it is a sense of déjà vu. But for the theatre-going public – many of whom also face the bureaucracy of recovering lost ticket costs – there is real concern about what next? The 2011 season was due to be announced this week but clearly this is unlikely to take place until the situation is more settled. The months of January and February are traditionally quiet as holidays are taken, and soon after normally the season would begin..

Jonathan Spencer Jones