"I have cancer but I'm not dead yet" says fired Mortier

Gerard Mortier today refused to give up his job without a fight. On learning that the Teatro Real intend to replace him with his successor immediately, he told Efe "I have cancer but I'm not dead yet."

Mortier's contract runs to 2016. But the theatre's board announced at 5pm today that Joan Matabosch, the successor formally announced yesterday, would be taking his place straight away instead of waiting two years.

Nobody told Mortier. Recuperating from a recent 3-hour operation, he only learned what was going on from the papers.

The board insist they have not fired Mortier, but merely complied with his stated wish to wash his hands of the Teatro Real if his successor was not to his liking.

Mortier accuses the government of using "Franco methods" to push through their candidate.

"I'm fighting a battle on all fronts," he said, alluding to his illness. "Life is too short, and this will not ruin a 40-year career".

"There are many good people in Spain," he concluded. And also, no doubt, many good employment lawyers - the only ones likely to profit from this cack-handed fiasco.

Comments

[Sheila]

I might have some sympathy for his ego (I do have sympathy for his health condition) if he hadn't been so clear that no Spanish individual would do. Really? How insulting to the Spanish people, especially since they pay his salary.

Mortier's behavior on my side of the Atlantic, deserting the NYCO without ever producing anything yet taking millions in salary anyway, has led me to have a very low opinion of him.

The powers that be can surely sideline Mortier with the charge that he is unfit to do his job currently. By the time he gets his day in court to prove otherwise, he might have to be wheeled in on a gurney. He's in a lot of denial. He should show some class and accept his congé without further undignified fulminations.
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Intermezzo replies - Mortier never earned "millions" from NYCO. He was paid a salary of $65,000 and severance of $335,000.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-05-20/mortier-flew-first-class-got-400-000-at-n-y-city-opera.html

I'd say NYCO more than got their money's worth, as Mortier's initiatives were behind many of the productions seen in the last three years.

For comparison, George Steel's most recently-reported salary at NYCO was $340,000.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-08/even-levy-s-7-000-a-day-matched-by-other-arts-titans.html

[Jaeger]

Sheila - I think your attitude here is absolutely shocking. Callous and bitter in the extreme and I am not sure you have a sympathetic or understanding bone in your body.

You clearly are also not in possession of the real facts about Mortier. Your comment about him "being unfit to complete his duties" also displays a clear ignorance of cancer as many people recover quite quickly following surgery and can continue working if receiving chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Your "gurney" comment also is entirely presumptuous and unnecessary.

Certainly any employer - at least this side of the Atlantic where our laws and attitudes to looking after people who are sick and protecting them from discriminatory attitudes such as this are a far cry from those in the US - has a duty both morally and legally to enter into dialogue and agree on the future at least before publicly rejecting him at a time when he is most vulnerable and without even as much as letting him know before issuing a press release.

The Spanish government have got this completely wrong and there is absolutely nothing to say that his successor should be Spanish if this is not going to be to the overall benefit of the establishment - which it very well may not be. This is just arrogant nationalism - probably because Spain does not have too much to be proud about at the moment with the state of their public finances.

I do hope people show you more sympathy if you were ever to run into difficulties in life.

[jack]

I have no sympathy whatsoever for the Mortier persona, he's arrogant, full of himself and quite unbearable frankly. I wish him all the best in health but when he opens his mouth he's the Mourinho of opera, a quite forgettable character. This last season at the Teatro Real has felt half cooked with some interesting operas with obvious weaknesses (Boris Godunov with a less than adequate singer in the lead), coups de publicité ( a world premire of a Philip Glass opera, interesting but not his best) and a total disaster, Don Giovanni as you never wanted to see it or hear it. I wish him the best recovery but, please, let him go. He wont starve.

[Sheila]

Steel's salary is obscene, I agree, especially since he now leads a very small operation after completing the wreck of NYCO as a world class opera company.

As to cancer, I have a close relative undergoing chemo for the second time right now, for a similar "death sentence" cancer, too. So I do actually know what the range of abilities can be before, during, and after. I am not as callous as you might think, not at all. But I am a realist about survival statistics, as Mortier apparently is not.

Mortier doesn't get a pass from me because of his health because it's not as if he is fighting to complete a last oeuvre. He's doing the "old man who writes a rotten will" thing, of trying to control the future. It makes for dramatic fiction, but in real life it is a disgusting show of ego. One might even say a tantrum.

Everything I have heard in the past several years about Mortier's tenure at the NYCO is very negative, and I did hear much larger dollar figures than you quote. His public comments about this current situation have in my opinion been very graceless.

If you want to argue that in Europe, there is no company or government that would decide a certain employee is too troublesome to keep around, and would count on that person to die before getting his day in court, then you are asking me to believe the Easter Bunny is real.
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Intermezzo replies - The figures I quoted (follow the link) are from NYCO's tax return, so ignore the gossip you heard - it's wrong.

And I'm afraid your last sentence is simply absurd. Employees have a great deal more protection in the EU than the US. Simple, obvious breaches of contract like this are generally handled swiftly and often without the need for court.

[DS]

If you knew anything about football, you would now that Mourinho is anything but forgettable.

And I disagree that Günther Groissböck was inadequate in Boris - but that, perhaps, is less of a fact than the above.

[DS]

"So I do actually know what the range of abilities can be before, during, and after."

your anecdotal evidence could be very close or indeed world's apart from Mortier's situation.

"He's doing the "old man who writes a rotten will" thing, of trying to control the future."

Are you the disinherited daughter or something? I find your vehement negativity bizarre.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Whether you "like" Mortier or not, there's something crazy in a world where a man who has run the Brussels and Paris Operas and the Salzburg festivals gets paid $65K while a man who has spent five minutes at the Dallas Opera and run a community theatre gets a salary of $340K. Presumably, they had to pay Steel that sum in order to get him to take a job with such limited budget to put on anything very decent. At least Mortier's stance is art first, executive salary second, Which is the more admirable?

[stage hand]

The Teatro Real's president is Gregorio Marañón, an aristocratic socialite and high-profile man from the world of business who landed the job thanks to his personal charm and close political affinity with the Zapatero government. It is Marañón, as President and leading voice of the Real board, who hired Mortier and it is Marañón who has now fired him. He is not a puppet of the current government and any accusation in that sense is ludicrous and completely unfounded. Moreover, Marañón has declared that the Real had shortlisted three candidates, two of whom were foreigners. It was Matabosch who was chosen. Is the fact he is Spanish meant to be held against him for some reason?

Gregorio Marañón has admittedly seriously mishandled this whole sorry episode. He should have anticipated Mortier's drama queen antics and prima donna demands and neutralized them from the outset.

It was not Mortier's place to choose his successor or impose conditions of any kind on the succession. It is outrageous that he should threaten the Teatro Real with contacting all his usual collaborators, slated for the next few seasons, and raise the spectre of their withdrawal, which would effectively scupper the Teatro Real over three or four years. His blinkered vision of Spain and his ignorance of Spanish professionals have not diminished in over three years. And why would they, when he keeps himself apart from the world, dining at the Ritz and never being seen at any cultural event outside his own theatre? It is shocking that someone in his position at the head of Spain's second opera house should publicly acknowledge his ignorance of Pedro Halffter Caro, conductor and director of the opera at Seville, Spain's fourth house, under 3 hours away from Madrid. His disrespectful throwaway dismissal of Halffter throws more light on Mortier himself than he would probably care to acknowledge. And one could go on. Mortier's downfall is in no small degree of his own making, whether intentionally or no is a matter for speculation.

It is very sad that Gregorio Marañón's cack-handedness in dealing with this histrionic has-been should have tarred the Teatro Real's image abroad. There were more elegant solutions and Marañón's utter failure to bring to his work the manners he so masterfully exploits privately will unfortunately be attributed to a theatre he will soon leave and be no part of.

It is also to be lamented that the whole issue of Mortier's succession should have coincided with his serious illness. Again, a common sense solution would have seen an interim stewardship enforced to support Mortier during the period of his long convalescence. He is being treated for pancreatic cancer in Germany and is not expected back in Madrid for months. Some solution was needed urgently, if only as a temporary measure. Marañón has allowed Mortier's machiavellian media posturing to cloud his judgement and has adopted a cruel and ultimately damaging course.

The Teatro Real has not seen one single change
of leadership which could be said to be normal. When Gregorio Marañón arrived, swept in by his friends in power, he declared that the governance of the Teatro Real would henceforth be conducted according to a Code of Good Conduct. He has, it seems, not been true to his word.