Who we are by what we value: an Italian Opera House facing an Identity Change

Italy has a long and renowned tradition in opera and belcanto which reflects the long history of opera houses as well as of great composers and great performers. While in other times, artistic excellence and innovativeness of the repertoire were set at the core, the cultural and the socioeconomic context in which this tradition is carried on today poses economic sustainability as the central value. This reflects a change in the centrality of opera and classical music in the taste of the general public, the parallel reduction of public resources dedicated to this sector, as well as a reaction to the public management of performance organizations which were sometimes used for the sake of creating jobs rather than for producing good performances. In the recent decades, opera houses, in particular, have gone through several economic and organizational turmoils, none of them has been resolutive of the financial problems of such organizations, nor has substantially impacted on the spirit of the Italian tradition in the opera and classical music performance. In 2013 a stricter law made the debt cut of opera houses through special public funding subject to the restructuring of the organization and to the rebalancing of the economic reports within 3 years, later extend of 2 years (2018). This norm has also imposed the renegotiation of contracts, the reduction of the workforce and has aligned public funding to performance indicators such as number of curtain raisings or saturation. The outcome of this normative change is not complete, however, opera houses seem to result in a deep transformation not only in governance and in management, but also in the meaning and assessment of artistic work.