Freelance artists are defending themselves against festival director Markus Hinterhäuser and commercial director Lukas Crepaz with a criminal complaint: They are accused of arbitrarily canceling the performance of three performances at the 2020 festival and not compensating the artists.
The plaintiffs of the artists’ association ‘art but fair UNITED’, together with an artist, have filed a criminal complaint for ‘serious fraud by deception’. It was already received last Thursday by the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption (WKStA) in Vienna. The association sent the statement of claim to representatives of the politicians of Salzburg and Vienna.
The association, represented by Viennese lawyers Günther and Christoph Neuhuber, accuses artistic director Markus Hinterhäuser and director Lukas Crepaz of forcing freelance artists in 2020 “to work without pay but above all without social security”. Furthermore, the Salzburg Festival allegedly failed to pay or insure the additional members, who came from the Vienna State Opera Choir Concert Association, during the pre-rehearsal period.
Instead of seven planned operas, only two were performed
The Salzburg Festival only took place in a scaled-down form in 2020 due to Corona restrictions: of seven planned opera productions, only ‘Elektra’ and a spontaneously planned ‘Cosi fan tutte’ with a new line-up of singers took place, “without the committed artists from the original planned revival of ‘Magic Flute’ or new production of ‘Don Giovanni’,” the professional association criticizes.
What particularly bothers the artists is that in 2020 a choir with 80 singers was allowed to perform and present Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but other pieces were canceled “for practical or aesthetic-artistic reasons”. The artists have suffered damage due to the unpaid fees. This is “only the risk of the theater entrepreneur, or in this case the Salzburg Festival Fund” and not that of the freelance artists.
Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, chairman of the artists’ association ‘art but fair united’, is also threatening a cease-and-desist declaration if the festival management continues to accuse the artists of making false statements. The WKStA will now investigate the advertisement.
Source: Krone
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