It is pleasing to note that The Royal Opera House has issued a statement regarding its bullying of Intermezzo. They have published it as a bit.ly, and being a .pdf, it opens on my PC without a full permalink. (It also seems I can't copy and paste without ending up with bizarre symbols, but that might just be my set-up).
I do note that they seem to announce a change of policy: they state they are 'happy to provide approved imagery to the media including blogs', which they never have been previously willing to do, so I shall be testing this after the weekend!
My re-reading of this is that their actual complaint was about publishing the set designs for forthcoming productions of Tannhauser and Adriana Lecouvreur, which I fully acknowledge raises a different set of questions from those posed by the publishing of slightly illicit curtain call photos permitted by custom and practice. However, the drafting of the correspondence did not make this at all clear.
Much more important is the high-handed and threatening way in which they handled this matter. There are too many examples of how the Royal Opera House treats many of its customers with disdain, or just in very unprofessionally - a comment on Intermezzo from someone who called the Friends' office
a very angry lady interrupted me 9 times in our conversation, shouted at me, and hung up....
Rather typical attitude from the Village Hall Flower Arranging Committee™ I feel.
I hope that the Royal Opera House learns from this episode, that the customer is never the enemy and for their sort of organisation is genuinely a friend, if not necessarily a 'Friend'. All publicly funded organisations are under threat of being slashed; Arts organisations in particular; now is not the time to annoy articulate and passionate customers. I reviewed my blog stats today, especially people visiting my main post on the matter, whether clicking through from Intermezzo or coming independently. I was struck by the wide range of universities, prestigious companies, and well-known charities. Behind the innocuous commercial and masked
IP addresses are numerous individuals well able to form their own conclusions.
