Cuban troupe loses funding
The Street Opera must now rely on public subsidy
By Gerardo Arreola
From the Mexican newspaper La Jornada
HAVANA – Economic reforms notwithstanding, the popular troupe The Street Opera lost its source of income because of an official decision and must now depend on public subsidy. The group’s director, baritone Ulises Aquino, attributes the loss to “resistance from the most aberrant bureaucratic sectors of our society.”
A ruling by the city government cancelled Aquino’s license to operate the restaurant El Cabildo, where the company presented its music and dance show with a mixture of opera, zarzuela [Spanish operetta], rock and Cuban rhythms.
A graduate of Cuba’s Higher Institute of Art, former singer at La Scala, a student of [noted Spanish soprano] Monserrat Caballé, familiar with a broad repertory of operas, zarzuelas and operettas, Aquino, 47, founded the group in 2006 to bring good music to the ordinary people.
Taking advantage of the reform launched by President Raúl Castro, Aquino last year opened a private restaurant to raise the revenues of the group beyond the subsidy and the wages from the government jobs some of the troupe members have.
Shutting down the restaurant, Aquino says, “is a serious mistake, because we understood that the Guidelines of the Economic Policy (the basis of the reform) gave us a legal framework within which we could find new ways to support ourselves, improve the artists’ quality of life and the quality of the show.”
He believes that the shutdown reflects “the line of thinking of those who want society to remain motionless, who want the State to continue to be the only figure capable of making projects work.”
The key point in the decision by the Municipal Directorate of Labor and Social Security, Aquino says, is the allegation that “the earnings obtained through the commercialization of the show, through the cover price, were for someone’s personal benefit.”
“That’s a contradiction,” Aquino maintains. “Self-employment (the legal formula for micro-entrepreneurs) is for personal benefit. On one hand, they accuse me of something that is legal. But on the other, their accusation is false, because in our case the revenues go to the entire collective of The Street Opera, to all the workers.”
Moreover, he explains, those revenues paid for the production: instruments, promotion, microphones, transportation, costumes, lights, sound equipment, fuel, food, emergencies and even support for technical and administrative artists if they had personal problems. “Besides, we pay taxes.”
The restaurant operated in an abandoned lot given to Aquino by the city’s authorities. He and his people cleared it and set it up. In an open letter sent to intellectual media outlets, the singer asks the office that ordered the shutdown: “How many of you have built a workplace like El Cabildo with your own hands?”
Aquino estimates that public assistance and the wages of workers with official jobs account for one third of the troupe’s budget, which for now is left with only those resources. In its new situation, The Street Opera will appear at the Karl Marx Theater on Aug. 25 and is preparing a fall tour in Mexico and Colombia.
Aquino says he was surprised by the way the place was shut down. “A commando of inspectors” interrupted the show on the night of July 21 in a manner “very similar to a Nazi break-in.” The inspectors walked on stage, halted the show and ordered the waiters to stop serving at tables.
In Aquino’s opinion, even if there had been any violations of the law, the inspection could have been done differently. “We had nothing to hide. That was a show of force. It is a threat that comes not from the nation’s highest authorities but from some mid-level conservative forces that are telling us bluntly that there are specific levels of power and that something like that can be done. The excessive use of force carries a clear message of ill will, which our society should fear deeply.”
The director of The Street Opera concedes that combining a restaurant with a show could fall into an unregulated gray area but insists that “it was not illegal.” He speculates that his group, which brought together 130 workers, is a cooperative of urban services like those the government has encouraged but not yet authorized.
He recalls that, as a result of a news agency story about the troupe, he was summoned last month to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. There, he spoke with two functionaries, one from the Ideological Department and another from the Culture Department. A few days later, El Cabildo was shut down.
“I refuse to think that this came out of the Central Committee,” Aquino says. The shutdown “happened just as the president of our republic spoke to the National Assembly about the need for a change in mindset. I don’t believe that one speech can have two meanings.”
