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OPERA

Shareholders at Norway’s Opera accept Chinese bid

Shareholders in the Norwegian company Opera Software have accepted a bid from a Chinese consortium valuing the group at 10.5 billion kroner ($1.2 billion, €1.1 billion), Opera announced on Wednesday.

Published: 25 May 2016 11:11 CEST
Shareholders at Norway's Opera accept Chinese bid
Opera's Oslo offices. Photo: Gorm Kallestad / Scanpix
The consortium, led by the Golden Brick Silk Road investment fund, still needs the approval of US and Chinese regulatory authorities before it can complete the acquisition of the world's fifth most-used web browser.
 
At 1430 GMT on Tuesday, the offer had been accepted by shareholders representing 90.6 percent of ordinary shares and 90.9 percent of voting rights, Opera said in a statement.
 
The consortium, which also includes the fund Yonglian and the companies Beijing Kunlun Tech and Qihoo 360, had to extend the offer in mid-April after failing to obtain the 90 percent required.
 
Opera claims to have 60 million users on desktops and almost 120 million users each month on Android devices, the Google operating system used on 80 percent of smartphones sold worldwide.
 
It is the world's fifth-biggest browser in terms of users, far behind Chrome (Google), Internet Explorer/Edge (Microsoft), Firefox (Mozilla), and Safari (Apple).

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OPERA

A Masked Ball: Madrid opera forced to cancel show after protest over social distancing

Spain's main opera house, the Teatro Real in Madrid, defended itself Monday after it had to cancel a performance when a small group of spectators loudly protested against being seated too close to each other amid a spike in Covid-19 infections.

Published: 22 September 2020 11:23 CEST
A Masked Ball: Madrid opera forced to cancel show after protest over social distancing
View of the Teatro Real in Madrid. Photo: Claudia Schillinger/ Flickr

The performance of Giuseppe Verdi's “A Masked Ball” on Sunday night was called off after a “minority” of spectators repeatedly jeered and clapped despite being offered the chance to be relocated or get a refund for the value of their tickets, the theatre said in a statement.

Videos shared on social media by several spectators who were at the performance showed full rows in the upper sections where seats are cheaper, while in the pricier floor section many empty seats could be seen.

Clapping and calls of “suspension!” could be heard even after the actors tried to begin their performance.

The Teatro Real had “respected the health norms” put in place by the regional government of Madrid to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and “even reinforced them”, the chairman of the body which manages the theatre, Gregorio Marañon, told a news conference on Monday.

Attendance at the performance had been reduced to just 51.5 percent of the total, well below the  limit of 75 percent set by the regional government, he added.

The regional government does not require there to be an empty seat between spectators, but it does require there to be a distance of 1.5 metres (five feet) between people, or if this is not possible, that they wear face masks, which is mandatory at the theatre, Marañon said.

The Teatro Real, which celebrated its bicentenary in 2018, is studying “what measures we can take for those spectators who… clearly felt in an uncomfortable situation,” he added.

The incident comes as the regional government of Madrid has imposed a partial lockdown in several densely-populated, low income areas mainly in the south of the Spanish capital where virus infections are surging, sparking a debate about inequality and triggering protests in these neighbourhoods over the weekend before the new measures took effect on Monday.

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