Woeful perspective

As the recession has put many U.S. arts groups in positions ranging from dicey to defunct, here's a bit of schadenfreudisch perspective from Italy:

Three of the country's 14 opera companies are in receivership, and all have been warned that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government considers the arts a "luxury." Teatro San Carlo in Naples has cut its opera season from six to three productions. La Scala in Milan may have to decide whether to "keep paying wages and not have enough to put on a production [or] cut people and produce less opera or operas not as they were meant to be," a musicians' representative tells Christine Spolar of the Chicago Tribune:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-italy-opera_spolardec25,0,1629422.story