The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) may very well be Australia’s institutional incarnation of Maximilien Robespierre.
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's hypocrisy, political leanings on full display in wake of pianist's remarks on Gaza war
So, how did Australia’s oldest professional orchestra fall into this civil war, and, by my analysis, why has every commentator on this incident – let us call it the Gillham Affair – missed the mark?During the pandemic, despite the fact that it received nearly $59 million in public money between 2020 and 2022 , the orchestra almost went broke.
In response, the MSO cancelled another of Mr Gillham’s performances, arguing that it had no idea he was going to say what he did and declaring that the orchestra’s stage is not a platform for expressing “personal political views.” If this is the orchestra’s position, then it’s not one its held for long. Of course, I agree that orchestras should not be hijacked by ideologues, but such ideologues and their causes are exactly who and what the MSO has, for some time, taken under their wing.
In what was probably intended to be a victory concert, Ms Cheetham Fraillon did not hesitate, with great emotion, to share her personal political views – and the MSO, having already endorsed them, offered no objections during or after the fact. At Quadrant, where I am the Music Editor, I recently published what proved to be a well-received article by Tony Thomas, entitled “The Trials of an MSO Subscriber.”
My opinion is that administrators who so quickly backflip on the decisions they make are not actual administrators, they are placeholders and like Robespierre came to be, are forever at the mercy of the mob. Or, recall the National Gallery’s recent and spirited defence of Vincent Namatjira’s portrait of Gina Rinehart. If the shoe had been on the other foot and Mrs Rinehart had painted an ugly, provocative caricature of an Aboriginal man, I think we all know that the gallery would not have supported her, let alone purchased this hypothetical painting.
In the long run, Australia’s orchestras, as well as our opera and ballet companies, must be depopulated of their unnecessary, overpaid bureaucrats - bureaucrats who are virtually always responsible for our legacy cultural institutions’ misguided decisions.
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