Philharmonic Cancels Tour as Financing Falls Through
New York Times
By JOHN ROCKWELL
Published: July 10, 2004
The New York Philharmonic announced yesterday that it had canceled a European tour planned for early September. The orchestra, led by its former principal guest conductor, Sir Colin Davis, was to have played five concerts at the first Seville International Music Festival in Spain, scheduled for Sept. 2 to 12, with other concerts to follow in Turin and Verona, Italy.
Lorin Maazel, the music director of the Philharmonic, still plans to conduct Bizet’s opera “Carmen” in historic Seville locations, which is to be the centerpiece of the festival. The Philharmonic was not scheduled to be part of those performances.
The Philharmonic said it had decided to cancel the European tour because of the Spanish festival’s failure, after long negotiations, to provide adequate financial guarantees. Two other concerts in Santander and Valencia, Spain, scheduled to precede the Seville dates, were canceled several weeks ago.
The collapse of this Spanish-Italian tour comes on the heels of two other Philharmonic cancellations this past season. The orchestra had planned a two-and-a-half-week European tour last fall. Eric Latzky, the orchestra’s director of public relations, said yesterday that while Citigroup, which has long sponsored Philharmonic tours, had not cut back its support, fees offered by European presenters had been insufficient to cover the projected deficit. The same explanation was offered for the cancellation of a two-week West Coast tour in February, although Citigroup was not involved in that.
The Seville festival is built around the Maazel-led “Carmen” production, which will be another splashy, filmed opera event on the model of the live “Tosca” in Rome in 1992, “Turandot” in Beijing in 1998 and “La Traviata” in Paris in 2000, which were all conducted by Zubin Mehta.
“Carmen” is to be directed by the Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura and to star Olga Borodina and Neil Shicoff. Budgeted at $15.8 million, it is being produced by an Austrian, Michael Ecker, and his Opera on Original Sites organization, which also presented the Beijing “Turandot.”
Philharmonic musicians do not stand to lose income from these tour cancellations; they are paid on a 52-week contract, although sometimes there is something left over from tour per diems.
More crucially, the orchestra and the players have lost the prestige that tour appearances can bring, and three cancellations in a single year suggest either the shaky state of tour financing today or inadequate planning. Neither Mr. Maazel nor Zarin Mehta, the executive director and newly named president of the Philharmonic (and Zubin Mehta’s brother) was available for comment.
Mr. Latzky pointed out that the Philharmonic still had several tours scheduled and said that their financing was on surer footing. The orchestra is to travel to South Korea and Japan in the fall, to undertake a short tour of the American Midwest in February and to appear at several European summer festivals in late August and September 2005. Further Asian and European appearances are planned for 2006-7, Mr. Latzky said.