As frequent readers know, I am a frequent attendee at the Salzburg Festival held, for the last one hundred plus years in Salzburg, Austria in July and August. For those six weeks, Salzburg is the center of the world's classical music. Over 250,000 tickets are sold and the concerts have an average attendance of around 94%. But even with this enthusiastic support the festival needs a lot of patronage. This comes from the Austrian government and corporate support. The main sponsor is Audi and one often sees Audi cars on the street proudly inscribed with "Main Sponsor of the Salzburg Festival." However, the festival also seeks private patrons and a couple of months ago, as a frequent attendee, I received a request for a donation. Here is what I think is happening.
Austria and Germany are very strong supporters of classical music as being a central element in their national cultures. Germany has around eighty opera houses compared to perhaps a dozen in all of North American including Canada, the US and Mexico. But the strength of the Germany economy in particular is now in question. Here is a recent headline: Audi to cut 7,500 jobs amid ‘challenging’ switch to EVs.
Carmakers are slashing jobs as the industry struggles with weak demand among customers for EVs but demands by lawmakers across the UK and EU to shift to electric.
Total EV sales across Europe, including the UK, fell by 1.3pc in 2024, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.
Audi has been hit hard by slowing EV demand. The carmaker’s deliveries of fully-electric vehicles slid 8pc year-on-year in 2024, to some 164,000. In February it closed a plant making EVs in Belgium that employed about 3,000 people.
Cuts at Audi are the latest in Germany’s auto industry, which has been hit hard by a slower-than-expected shift to electric cars, the loss of cheap Russian fuel and fierce competition from Chinese rivals. Audi’s parent company Volkswagen announced in December it would cut 35,000 jobs at its VW brand in Germany by 2030.
It's not just cars, of course, the really lunatic climate change policies being practiced in Germany are resulting in a slow but inevitable deindustrializing of the country.
A much poorer Germany means less support for things like the Salzburg Festival. I mention Germany in particular because the main patrons are all German companies. Austria, a much-smaller economy, provides much less funding.
The truth is that things like the Salzburg Festival are formidably expensive to put on. I have to research the budget sometime if I can get the numbers. But it would not surprise me if they needed between $100 and $150 million dollars annually. And that is just a wild guess.
Let's listen to some cheering music. From the 2005 Festival here is Valery Gergiev conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.
4 comments:
Magical thinking about EV viability puts me in mind of a line by the English poet Ralph Hodgson: “Some things have to be believed to be seen.”
Good one.
"It's not just cars, of course, the really lunatic climate change policies being practiced in Germany are resulting in a slow but inevitable deindustrializing of the country."
This seems like a slant being put on the matter by specific news sources, since they know the demographic of their main readership likes such a slant. The fact is, industrial leaders in Germany consistently complain in interviews about China being able to undercut German production through a whole host of non-climate-related advantages.
Actually, some of my views come from discussions with a very good friend who lives in Germany. Industrial production in Germany is certainly severely hampered by the high cost of energy due to climate change policies. While in China, the absence of such policies enables energy to be much cheaper.
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