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By Matthew Westphal
08 Nov 2007
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| The Palais Garnier (top) and the Opéra-Bastille, the two houses of the Paris Opera. |
Just as a strike breaks out at La Scala, the management of another august European company, the Opéra de Paris, has received notice of a new strike to begin next week.
This work stoppage, set to begin at 12:01 a.m. on Nov. 14, will be the second labor action against the Opéra in less than a month. Five days of walkouts at the very end of October by technical staff caused the cancellation of ten performances and cost the company €2.2 million.
Three of the national unions involved — Sud, FO and the FSU — have called for a strike running November 14-30, according to Agence France-Presse. The CGT, a major federation of trade unions and the largest organization taking part, has planned daily walkouts, renewable indefinitely, beginning on the 14th.
This second threatened labor action jeopardizes not only the Opéra's continued run of Puccini's Tosca, which was disrupted last month, but also a major revival of the Robert Carsen staging of Handel's Alcina and the Opéra Ballet's holiday presentation of The Nutcracker with Rudolf Nureyev's choreography.
These walkouts by technical workers — which have not as yet been joined by the Opéra's performers and artistic staff — are but one part of the ongoing strikes throughout France over President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to reform the various national union pension schemes.
With myriad union locals all over the country calling work stoppages at various times, one French website, paris.indymedia.org, has created a page titled "Handy Reference: Your Strikes in November" listing who's walking out when. At the bottom of the page, the editors observed that yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
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