Try to resist the world of entertainment, to go on despite the limited capacity puts a strain on the finances, already suffering, of theaters and cinemas.
An obstacle course, between stop and go due to outbreaks born here and there, which now the escalation of infections is putting further strain on.
The stop at Portici di Carta in Turin and the presentation of the La Scala season are the first signs on the road of a new possible blackout of programming that could definitively bring the sector to its knees.
After the first wave of the pandemic and the lockdown, which had forced the cancellation of all events, including major festivals, cinema, theater, music, exhibitions and the publishing world, they got back into motion, albeit amid a thousand limitations and precautions.
Archived the Venice Film Festival, which took place, however without international stars, in a less alarming phase than the current one, now it is the organizers of the Rome Festival who are trying to reach the goal of 25 October, among some defections, masks, thermoscanner and doubts related to the trend of the epidemiological curve.
In the publishing world, after the Mantua Literature Festival had been regularly held in September and Insieme a Rome earlier this month (while Buchmesse, scheduled until 18 October, had already opted for an all-digital programming), it had to raise white flag Portici di carta, which was scheduled in Turin on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18. The announcement of La Scala yesterday, which postponed the presentation of the 2020-2021 season, while confirming the shows scheduled until 19 October.
In recent days it was Petruzzelli who had to suspend the performances of Falstaff after 10 employees tested positive for the covid.
The show, however, does not stop for the moment.
From Milan to Naples, the next will be a weekend of reopening and restarts for the Italian theater.
The Opera di Roma has scheduled Mozart's Zaide from 18 to 27 October, while tonight the Auditorium also opens in the capital to kick off the symphonic season of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia.
The major exhibitions also remain open.
The operators, however, look at the measures that would be under consideration by the government: the curfew from 10pm would jeopardize much of the programming, while the limited capacities, currently at 200 seats except for exceptions, force the structures to work at a loss.
The numbers speak for themselves: 250,000 live concert workers are still and about half of the more than 300,000 employees in theaters.
And while for the world of books we see some small signs of recovery (the loss of turnover compared to 2019 decreased from -20% in April to -7% between July and September), cinemas in particular suffer. , who have resumed planning some first visions despite the collapse of the spectators.
The data released to the International Audiovisual Market are alarming: according to the European Audiovisual Observatory, box office receipts in Europe are expected to drop by 70% in 2020 compared to 2019 and in 2021, again compared to 2019, by 40. %.