La Fenice management and staff clash over Shanghai tour

A dispute between La Fenice’s management and employee representatives has intensified after the Venice opera house’s Shanghai tour. Superintendent Nicola Colabianchi and the staff’s RSU representation have offered sharply different accounts of the working conditions and organisation of the visit.

A meeting is scheduled for November 4. It comes ahead of announced strike dates on November 13, the opening of the opera season, and November 28, the symphonic season’s opening.

In a letter to staff, Colabianchi thanked the company for its artistic achievements while referring to unexpected difficulties. His account cited a rehearsal missed because of an assembly and a principal performer missing a flight, requiring work to proceed without that artist.

The RSU rejected the implication that the problems were adequately explained by those incidents. It alleged organisational confusion, including a dress rehearsal turning into ensemble preparation and malfunctioning music-stand lights interrupting the conductor’s work. These are the representatives’ claims, rather than independently established findings about responsibility.

The staff response credited the workforce’s professionalism with sustaining the performances. It also called for respect, better organisation, protection of health, appropriate contractual classification and attention to unfilled management functions.

The disagreement therefore reaches beyond whether the tour produced successful public performances. Both sides refer to artistic results, but differ over how those results were achieved and what the experience reveals about the institution’s internal arrangements.

The November 4 meeting provides the next formal opportunity to address those differences. At this stage, the announced strike dates remain a labour-relations development, not evidence that the affected opening performances have already been cancelled.

For audiences, the distinction matters. The dispute concerns preparations and workplace conditions as well as upcoming dates; the outcome will depend on further discussions and any subsequent decisions by management and staff representatives.