Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

CULTURE

Jane Fonda urges Vienna Opera to cut ties with fossil fuel firms

US actress and activist Jane Fonda on Wednesday called on the Vienna Opera to end its partnerships with fossil fuel companies trying to "make themselves socially acceptable" by sponsoring cultural institutions while "killing the planet".

Published: 15 February 2023 16:17 CET

Jane Fonda urges Vienna Opera to cut ties with fossil fuel firms

US actress Jane Fonda (C) arrives with her host Austrian entrepreneur Richard "Moertel" Lugner (R) for a press conference at Lugner Cinema on the eve of the annual Vienna Opera Ball on February 15, 2023 in Vienna, Austria. (Photo by JOE KLAMAR / AFP)

Fonda arrived in Vienna at the invitation of Austrian building tycoon Richard Lugner, who since 1992 has been bringing VIPs to the world-famous Vienna Opera Ball.

“These fossil fuel companies are criminal, they are killing people, killing the planet,” she told journalists.”What they try to do to make themselves socially acceptable is give money to museums and operas.”

“We must not let that happen,” the Oscar winner said, adding that she was sorry to learn that the Austrian energy group OMV was a sponsor of the opera.

People need to “listen to the young” and the climate activists who glue themselves to streets, Fonda said, because they were “making an effort to keep our mind focused on this crisis that could mean the end of civilisation”.

READ ALSO: Who are the climate protesters disrupting traffic in Vienna – and why?

Fonda still plans to attend the Vienna Opera Ball on Thursday, saying that Lugner had offered “a lot of money” along with his invitation. But dancing is probably not on the agenda.

“I have a fake shoulder, two fake hips, two fake knees, I am old and I may fall apart,” she quipped.

The amount Lugner pays his guest of honour is a closely guarded secret. Former guests of the building tycoon include celebrities like Sophia Loren, Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.

Known for her anti-war activism during the US-Vietnam war, Fonda is also an outspoken advocate for climate activism. In January, the UK’s Royal Opera House announced that it had ended its 33-year sponsorship deal with energy giant BP.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

Vienna Festival director Milo Rau hits back at anti-Semitism accusations

As the conflict in Gaza sharply polarises opinion, “we must be inflexible” in defending the free exchange of ideas and opinions, the acclaimed Swiss director told AFP in an interview this week.

“I’m not going to take a step aside… If we let the antagonism of the war and of our society seep into our cultural and academic institutions, we will have completely lost,” said the 47-year-old, who will inaugurate the Wiener Festwochen, a festival of theatre, concerts, opera, film and lectures that runs until June 23rd in the Austrian capital and that has taken on a more political turn under his tenure.

The Swiss director has made his name as a provocateur, whether travelling to Moscow to stage a re-enactment of the trial of Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot, using children to play out the story of notorious Belgian paedophile Marc Dutroux, or trying to recruit Islamic State jihadists as actors.

Completely ridiculous

The Vienna Festival has angered Austria’s conservative-led government — which is close to Israel — by inviting Greek former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and French Nobel Prize winner for literature Annie Ernaux, both considered too critical of Israel.

A speech ahead of the festival on Judenplatz (Jews’ Square) by Israeli-German philosopher Omri Boehm — who has called for replacing Israel with a bi-national state for Arabs and Jews — also made noise.

“Who will be left to invite? Every day, there are around ten articles accusing us of being anti-Semitic, saying that our flag looks like the Palestinian flag, completely ridiculous things,” Rau said, as he worked from a giant bed which has been especially designed by art students and installed at the festival office.

Hamas’ bloody October 7th assault on southern Israel and the devastating Israeli response have stoked existing rancour over the Middle East conflict between two diametrically opposed camps in Europe.

In this climate, “listening to the other side is already treachery,” lamented the artistic director.

“Wars begin in this impossibility of listening, and I find it sad that we Europeans are repeating war at our level,” he said.

As head of also the NTGent theatre in the Belgian city of Ghent, he adds his time currently “is divided between a pro-Palestinian country and a pro-Israeli country,” or between “colonial guilt” in Belgium and “genocide guilt” in Austria, Adolf Hitler’s birthplace.

Institutional revolution

The “Free Republic of Vienna” will be proclaimed on Friday as this year’s Vienna Festival celebrates. according to Rau, “a second modernism, democratic, open to the world” in the city of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and artist and symbolist master Gustav Klimt.

Some 50,000 people are expected to attend the opening ceremony on the square in front of Vienna’s majestic neo-Gothic town hall.

With Rau describing it as an “institutional revolution” and unlike any other festival in Europe, the republic has its own anthem, its own flag and a council made up of Viennese citizens, as well as honorary members, including Varoufakis and Ernaux, who will participate virtually in the debates.

The republic will also have show trials — with real lawyers, judges and politicians participating — on three weekends.

Though there won’t be any verdicts, Rau himself will be in the dock to embody “the elitist art system”, followed by the republic of Austria and finally by the anti-immigrant far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which leads polls in the Alpine EU member ahead of September national elections.

Url copied to clipboard!