Opera Soap

After the last stalemate in the candidacy race to become the next lucky (perhaps rather unlucky) General Manager of Slovakia's National Opera, there is - believe it or not - some movement. In fact, any movement would be more than welcome, as the incompetency of not being able to find a suitable manager for a prestigious organisation like the Opera is really becoming more than embarrassing.

The fact remains that for more than three years a centralist management has been causing many upheavals and controversies, where the Opera wore out every few months another manager. Controversially mainly because all new incumbents were hailed as the brighter than bright future, leading the Opera to the heights of European, eh no: even World level! The dream-team bubble burst only within a too short a period, with a record of merely 3 months to be attributed to the famous singer Gabriela Beňačková. Whoever was to blame, three in a row was simply too much of a coincidence, yet it had to take a coup-d'état of 3 directors had to take place, before the General Manager Ms Hroncová was forced to step down.

While these things might equally happen in any other country as well, what is a bit frustrating or disturbing is the fact, that misty and vague interviews (if any) are given, leaving an odd flavour of political intrigues and hidden agendas. But let's call it sheer mismanagement.

As I described in one of my earlier blogs on this, 7 new candidates submitted their applications to the selection committee. For some unconvincing reasin one candidate withdrew one day before the interviews. The outcome: nobody made it. Fulfilling al requirements, plus handing in a fully elaborated strategic business plan seemed not sufficient enough to convince the committee to pick the right successor. 

Then Minister of Culture offered the famous singer Peter Dvorský - currently also in charge of the Košice Opera - to become the next General Manager. Although in this was suspected for a long time, this obviously was far from a surprise. Knowing, that Mr Dvorský has aspirations for this post, there is however a slight twist to the matter; somehow, Mr Dvorský didn't meet the requirements as stipulated in the aforementioned selection procedure. Since this was unsuccessful, now the Minister can adjust the requirements according to his own discretion, paving the way for a selected... well; preselected candidate. 

Whether Mr Dvorský would be able to manage the SND Opera is debatable. What is a big shame is the murky process. A farce to justify the next political moving of the chess figures on the board. A slight sense of exhaustion takes hold of me when I try to fathom all this fiddling around and wasting money just to play the pathetic old game of who gets what. Bratislava will probably never reach any level at all with its Opera, neither the global, nor the European standard. It's a costly soap situated in a provincial village where nobody cares. Very costly with a dragging yet sad ending.

MS