Overpriced Muti
I would like to enquire why tickets for the forthcoming Riccardo Muti concert at the Mediterranean Conference Centre are being priced at just two expensive categories: dress circle/stalls (Lm40) and balcony (Lm35), with only Lm5 difference between them.
I would like to enquire why tickets for the forthcoming Riccardo Muti concert at the Mediterranean Conference Centre are being priced at just two expensive categories: dress circle/stalls (Lm40) and balcony (Lm35), with only Lm5 difference between them. I have regularly attended world-class festivals, including the Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, Montreux Festival, Munich Opera Festival and others. Tickets are always divided into four, six and even eight categories. Tickets at a lower price than Lm35 should be available.
Last year, for instance, I bought a good gallery ticket for a Salzburg Festival performance of Mahler's 5th Symphony (a colossal work) by the top Vienna Philharmonic orchestra for Lm23. In the 2003 Salzburg Festival, I heard a whole opera (Contes d'Hoffmann) and Mahler's 9th Symphony (i.e. two tickets) for Lm48.
I have also checked the prices for a concert by the same orchestra under Maestro Muti in this year's Ravenna festival: prices range from €10- €52 (divided in six categories)!
About the orchestra itself: The Luigi Cherubini orchestra is, after all, a youth orchestra (Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini).
I have no doubt that these are outstanding young players but, for all the organisers would have us believe, this is a relatively new youth orchestra and not at par with the great world and recording orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony and the like. Hence the overpricing as well, in my opinion.
Yet another shortcoming, and which indicates how much the organisers think poorly of the Maltese cultural intellect, concerns the fact that tickets are being sold before the full programme has been announced!
How do you expect people to buy such expensive tickets "blindly", without knowing what's actually being played? Just giving the composers' names is not enough. What does "Schubert" mean? Is it an overture, one of his early symphonies or one of his great later ones? Also, I want to know whether there are musical pieces that I may have heard many times before in concert.
One final point - I am all in favour of classical music concerts by great international conductors and orchestras being performed in Malta. We simply lack exposure to this type of culture too much. However, why does it always happen that when something is done, one gets the strong impression that it is strongly intended as basically another money-making venture?