【論説】経済危機とマエストロ

NewYorkTimesが，ニューヨークのオペラ，オーケストラが存亡の危機に立たされた厳しい経済事情について，世界大恐慌といわれた1930年代の経験を回顧していましたから，参考までに紹介しておきたいと思います．

当時論じられたさまざまな対策，とくにメトロポリタン・オペラのオーケストラとニューヨーク・フィルを併合し，オペラ上演数を減らして，オーケストラ公演の回数と折り合いを付けるいう改善案を巡って，当時の最高給者トスカニーニが，オーケストラの質的低下を招くといって反対論を唱えたことが書かれていて，興味深く思えました．

わが国でも，バブル崩壊期に，カザルスホールを潰したでぃれくたーが，今公務員制度改革で論じられている事例に倣っていえば，「わたり」で自分達は上手く立ち回りながら，レジデント・クァルテットの萌芽を摘み取った過去を忘却して，今度は，NPO法人化という名目で，あるクァルテットと一体化しその主体性を危うくしかねないことを懸念しますが，今回の世界的経済危機は，さらにいっそうわが国音楽産業に深刻な影響を及ぼすと考えられますから，一見，危機意識の乏しい音楽業界への警鐘の意味で，City Opera, Metropolitan Opera 問題に続く第3弾として，1930年代のアメリカ発世界大恐慌期のアメリカ音楽事情回顧記事を転記しておきたいと思います．

1例をあげれば，わが国のチケット料金は，原油価格が急騰してインフレ懸念が高まった時期に，およそ10％程度値上げされたと思うのですが，その後の急速なデフレ懸念の浸透にもかかわらず，チケット料金は少しも値下げされてこなかったことが，クラシック音楽への顧客離れを招くことが懸念されるのです．

The Maestro and the Money

THE recession has brought its woes to the inhabitants of Lincoln Center.

The New York City Opera lost its designated general director, Gerard Mortier, because of a large cut in his promised budget. The Metropolitan Opera is scaling back some productions for next season. The New York Philharmonic is predicting a budget shortfall of up to $3 million this season.

But at least so far, and despite the frequency with which current economic troubles have been compared to the crises of the 1930s, the woes of the city’s signature musical institutions are nothing compared with the situation during the Depression, when the very existence of New York’s orchestras and opera houses was in question.

A dip into the archives of the venerable New York Philharmonic, which traces its history to 1842, shows something near panic seeping through the onionskin carbons of board minutes and browning newspaper clips from 75 years ago. The board grappled with crushing deficits that threatened the orchestra’s existence, despite the presence of its titan of a music director, Arturo Toscanini.

In the middle of the 1933-34 season, at the depths of the Depression, the Philharmonic-Symphony Society, as the orchestra was officially known, reported a $150,000 deficit on expenses of $686,000 — the equivalent of a $13 million gap on the current Philharmonic’s budget, $60 million.

In December 1933, the board reported a “marked loss of income” from ticket sales and a hit from higher taxes. Since the 1931-32 season, the endowment fund and contributions used to make up deficits “had largely ceased to be productive,” according to minutes. With the orchestra’s ability to borrow tapped out, its survival hung in the balance.

The managers extracted two rounds of pay cuts from the musicians, and by 1935 they were earning $90 a week. (These days, ironclad labor contracts make salary cuts inconceivable, although the orchestra’s management could take a hard line on future raises.)

The Depression-era board also diverted $15,000 of a $30,000 bequest from the musicians’ pension fund to the endowment, another no-no today. In addition, the board sought radio sponsorship from Pepsodent, the toothpaste giant, for the orchestra, “provided its dignity is not sacrificed,” according to board minutes. (Today, the orchestra’s sponsor is Credit Suisse.)

The board further began a nationwide campaign to raise $500,000 in emergency funds, appealing even for small change. The archives contain a small folding card with slots for dimes, going up to $2.

Mayor La Guardia, Eleanor Roosevelt and Nicholas Butler, the president of Columbia University, all made radio appeals for contributions. People who sent money in the name of Toscanini received autographed thank-yous from him. By the campaign’s end on April 30, 1934, the papers reported that $501,659 had been raised, although, by the start of the next season, half that money was gone, applied to covering old deficits to avoid heavy interest payments on bank loans.

The orchestra back then also considered reducing conductor salaries. Toscanini was earning an astronomical $110,000 in 1931-32, or about $1,833 a concert — 20 times what a rank-and-file orchestra player earned in a week.

The juxtaposition of that salary and the public appeal for funds was not lost on some commentators.

“The cancer causing the Society’s financial plight is not the expense of the orchestra but the ridiculous expense of having Toscanini with it,” Walter Anderson wrote in the March 1934 issue of Musical Advance magazine.

Perhaps most intriguingly, the Philharmonic board in 1934 devised detailed plans to merge with the Metropolitan Opera, with an eye to saving money for both troubled institutions. One proposal called for 14 weeks of opera, 14 weeks of concerts and two weeks of rehearsals. The suggested merger even took into account savings from combined postage and stationery. The Philharmonic would have played for the operas and given its concerts at the Metropolitan Opera house, abandoning Carnegie Hall — then its home — and saving on rent.

THE proposal drew howls of protest from musicians of the orchestras, subscribers and contributors to the nationwide appeal. The death knell was sounded by Toscanini, whose opinion was relayed from Milan in a cable by Bruno Zirato, the Philharmonic’s assistant manager. Playing at the Met Opera house would lower the orchestra’s standard, Toscanini said, and the public would not be satisfied by the fewer opera performances.

“He believes that the merger would not help either organization artistically,” Mr. Zirato said. And so the Met and New York Philharmonic remain on their own today — grappling independently with their money woes.