Venice Fired Its Music Director. The Orchestra Cheered.

Beatrice Venezi lasted six months as music director of Teatro La Fenice before Venice's most prestigious opera house terminated her contract on April 26. The cause: an interview with an Argentine newspaper in which she accused her own musicians of passing jobs "from father to son," called the season ticket holders "eighty years old" and resistant to change, and described management as operating "in an almost anarchic context, in the hands of the unions." When news of the dismissal broke, eyewitnesses reported an eruption of joy from both the orchestra and the house.