For an opera for everyone

After several claims for the exclusion of the opera and choirs in the new law for the promotion of the performing arts, senators have partially accepted the request of our union and the 1 August will be of new under discussion in the Committee on Culture of the Senate

This time, for the point of opera, the question of the origin of funds to be injected will be addressed and what will be the amount committed by the & # 39; 39 executive, that they be included in the same law that is being discussed or in a new specific law for these disciplines of artistic execution.

In this scenario, we are greatly disturbed if the discussion will be mediated by the information provided by those who hold these arts or only by the directors of the operas

. We know that we came late in the discussion, that actors, puppeteers and circuses worked for four years to fulfill this dream of having a law to promote the performing arts. case However, we also know that there was no call for dialogue or construction with the actors of the performing arts.

We regret that there is a distant and static view of what an opera may be, because in Chile There has been and there is always a predominantly hegemonic view that Associates with an elite. The opera is not that. Lyrical singers and those singing in choirs do not come from the elite; We have made an art which, in Chile, has not been channeled towards cultural policies that bring it closer to the people. We have not had a say in the allocation and distribution of resources for the opera that has been used for more than thirty years.

However, we appreciate the existence of the Municipal Theater of Santiago, which generates the main and very little.

We hope that senators have the foresight to consider a development of opera and choral singing for all, with our participation in this construction, without delivering again in a sealed envelope. the theme to directors of major theaters, who continue to show an increasingly lower valuation of Chilean artists.

If before we could audition at least for opera roles, today they bring foreign artists who behave badly, who receive very expensive caches, to the detriment of Chileans who receive much less for the same roles, and when they have the opportunity to badume them.

This obeys that they totally ignored the role they could play for the benefit of the country, that is to say nothing less than to train new and better generations of singers , directors and all the disciplines involved in this art, for the benefit of our cultural development. On the contrary, while theatrical directors are singers' agents, the latter will continue to evolve by criteria far removed from the common good.

We insist on the fundamental, that is to say that the Senate's Culture Committee meets with the artífices and protagonists of the art. On which will be legislated, so that we begin to approach an opera included and indeed for all Chileans.

Paula Elgueta is a lyric singer, choir director and psychologist. She is Vice-President of the Association of Lyrical Singers of Chile