Media censorship? Let me qualify that straight away by pointing out that the 'media' in question is not those nice gentlemen from Die Welt. Rather it's the fearlessly frank former Vienna Intendant turned Germanic Jeremy Kyle, Ioan Holender.
Since leaving the State Opera, Holender now brings much-needed "depth, irony and entertainment value" to the Austrian public via his own TV show. In Kultour he travels around Europe reporting on cultural events and sparring with the artists concerned. He asked Salzburg Easter Festival if he could tackle their upcoming Carmen for a future episode.
But the Festival's artistic director Peter Alward has turned him down on the grounds of "personal dislike, lack of respect and obvious bias". It seems he remembers some remarks Holender made to the press a couple of years ago, when the Festival was going through its fraud crisis. Holender, true to type, had described it as a "nonsense Festival without a concept" and a "moribund, artificially kept alive waste of money."
Now Holender has labelled Alward's refusal to co-operate as "pre-censorship". Alward says the accusation is "completely irrelevant".
Holender points out "If I'd only let those who'd written good things about the State Opera into the house, soon no one would have been allowed to come anymore."
