La Scala is made to pay an usher it fired for shouting ‘Free Palestine’
OperaA labour court in Milan has ordered the opera house to pay out the contract of a female usher who shouted ‘Free Palestine’ when prime minister Giorgia Meloni arrived for a performance on May 4. The fired usher is also entitled to her legal costs.
Her union rep said: ‘We have maintained from the start that shouting ‘Free Palestine’ is not a crime, and that workers cannot be sanctioned for their political opinions.’
Il mondo has just gone matto.
When she shouted “Palestina Libera”, were the subtitles on?
Good to hear. It’s time to start fighting institutions that justify or support genocide, or persecute the simply decent people who oppose it.
La Scala does all these dreadful things? News to me.
Stop using the term “genocide”. All you are doing is advertising your ignorance. Maybe open up a dictionary and also learn some history. To people like you, anytime Israel defends itself the only word that comes out of your mouth is genocide
it seems to me that any utterance from ushers that do not belong to the production, should be strictly prohibited.
That says it all. Any employer has the right to instruct its employees as to what is and is not allowed within their duties.
May not be a crime, but was it breach of contract?
Driving home from the Wiggie on Wednesday I caught the end of a Reith Lecture on BBCR4 that made the point about the woke mob’s demand for ideological purity. Being 80% in and reaching a consensus on the rest isn’t good enough. Absolute 100% moral virtuosity is the imperative. It ended as I was driving past the ponds where my wife swims in Highgate and the R4 continuity guy announced an interview with Katie Mitchell and her misogyny thing. At which point I thought about taking a hard left and ending it all there and then.
I refused to go to the Roberto Bolle Gala at Sadlers Wells a few weeks ago, he being Chairman of the La Scala Resistance Society. If he can take over the stage in full Pale regalia, every bleating usher will be shouting the next wokeism.
P.S. Nothing against ushers. Even though some at Covent Garden likely bullied Beard into the Israeli Opera capitulation, they are faultlessly polite and helpful. At a recent opera I did not feel well just as it was about to resume, so I left my seat in the orchestra stalls. They snuck me in to the vacant Director’s Box for the rest of the show. Can’t say better than that.
I wonder: Would the court be as liberal was the opposite view, or with a shout “get lost you fascist”?
Last time I checked, in Italy there was still freedom of speech.
Time and place, mate. There is freedom of speech, and the usher should have been free to join a protest outside the theatre on her day off. But inside is for opera, and employees should stick to their duties, for which they are engaged and paid.
Yes, matto indeed. In the UK, demonstrators expressing opposition to genocide are being hauled away by the police.
Non supporting genocide by Hamas ever were…
Yes obviously. And yet I bet all the right wingers here who usually cry about “we have no free speech anymore” and “no body can take jokes” will still find a way to condemn this usher.
I’m not a right winger, but I like good manners and think there are times and places for protest. If this particular protest, expressing views to which the usher is perfectly entitled, took place within La Scala, I object. If it was done outside on the usher’sown time, fair enough.
Seriously? “Freedom of speech” does not entitle one to scream in a theater filled with paying patrons much less if the person is being paid to assist those patrons. This is your idea of free speech?
E i loggionisti della Scala, cosa ne pensano, di questa decisione di legge da far ridere, o piangere, i polli ?
As a “normal” citizen the usher has the free speech rights to say whatever she likes – so long as it is not hate speech. However, while she is on duty as an employee of the opera house, she must keep her mouth shut, as in that capacity she represents her work place. I find that verdict quite questionable and actually shameful, as it is obvious that any public work spaces should keep personal opinions and expression of political/moral views out. When a court justice defends such an act, it is showing a political bias. But that’s Italy for you…
Agreed. Utterly.
While Italian and other European anti-Zionists continue demonizing Israel, their governments are purchasing Israeli miltary hardware like never before.