Legal costs to fight for our fees

This is a story of financial mismanagement and bald injustice.

The Teatro Maggio Fiorentino planned and contracted a cast for Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - 17 principal singers - for performances this summer. The theatre cancelled the production one month before rehearsals, replacing it with a revival of Verdi’s Falstaff, and then unilaterally withdraw from the Meistersinger contracts, claiming its financial position left it no choice.

The theatre had a choice. It could have rehired as many of our cast as possible for Falstaff. It could have performed Meistersinger as a concert without the expensive production. It could even have tried to renegotiate our contracts. Instead it chose to leave 13 of the contracted singers unpaid, unemployed, uncompensated.

We are going to fight this. Not only is it unfair to us, our agents, and those who depend on us, our but it sets an alarming precedent - that contracts in opera are just words. We can’t allow that to take hold. Our system relies on trust - when that goes, the system collapses.

That’s why we need your help. Please give whatever you can towards our legal costs so we can fight for what we are owed, for what the theatre promised us. Initially it will cost €150 per litigant for consultation but if we have to go to court we are looking at costs of €1500 each, which we can ill afford when we are so deeply out of pocket. Any little you can offer will help our campaign.