To all the musicians with whom I have had the pleasure of collaborating in the past productions of the New Year’s Concert
and to the clients, the bodies involved and the professionals
In these hours when invitations to attend New Year’s concerts of all sorts and everywhere, in front of a PC multiply, I feel the need to turn to you for a thought and a wish.
In these days, despite a thousand difficulties, we should have been together, in different theaters, for the now traditional New Year’s Concert – this year entitled “The Queen of Nights” – thanks to the appreciation and trust of institutions, municipal administrations, private sponsors and paying audience.
I have never even contemplated and proposed the alternative of streaming because, in a time when with a simple click it is possible to enjoy an incredible musical offer, which is added to the already well-known TV New Year’s concerts from Vienna and Venice, not I find it sensible and justifiable to use resources to create yet another “remote” product.
Furthermore, I consider the genre of the New Year’s concert a “party”, and the parties are held with the guests and with the possibility of looking into each other’s eyes: no video could have made up for this inability to share.
I respect those who, in this time, have made different choices to save projects, salaries and jobs; I understand less those who have tried to be there “at any cost”, accepting and imposing on colleagues in the sector worse working and qualitative conditions, in an already difficult context.
We don’t need this.
I hope to return to live concerts as soon as possible and that all artistic and cultural activities in the country, the real engine of our society and wealth for our relationships, resume. And that this time of transition, this crisis, is also lived in silence, an opportunity to rethink an improvement.
We need this.
This is my wish to all of us – musicians, live show workers, cultural operators – and to our audience.