Questions about the handling of professional musical performers by the Jalisco Secretary of Culture and Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra (JPO) Director Marco Parisotto, simmering for months, have taken on urgency with continuing allegations by musicians of mistreatment, and investigations led by new Congress Deputy Kehila Kú and two independent analysts.
The probe, which includes a financial study by well-known classical music producer and promoter Ernesto Álvarez, focuses largely on Parisotto, who began as JPO director early in 2014. The investigators announced that the orchestra is “technically broke” and sent a letter October 8 to Governor Aristóteles Sandoval, complaining about “excessive expenditures” by the JPO, including Parisotto’s salary of US$12,000 per month.
That figure draws attention for several reasons. One, it is denominated in dollars. Also, local media report that the salary is far higher than the governor’s, pointing out that is illegal.
Another curiosity is that, according to Álvarez’s analysis of the JPO “transparency” web page (http://transparencia.info.jalisco.gob.mx, which has become much more difficult to use since 2014), only two monthly payments have so far been paid Parisotto during his 33 months on the job.
Although Parisotto’s salary has been well known since 2014, the sharp change in the peso-dollar exchange rate since then (it moved from 13.2 to 19.3 pesos to the dollar) has indeed made the salary worth more than the governor’s. According to the 2014 rate, $US12,000 was worth 159,000 pesos, making it at the time significantly less than the governor’s salary of 166,195 pesos. However, it is now 65,405 pesos more than the governor’s salary.
As for questions about why the salary is in dollars, Álvarez explains that it is not actually paid in dollars, but the equivalent in pesos, which is tied to the daily exchange rate.
While that question is settled, Álvarez expressed disquiet that Parisotto’s contract only requires him to direct 12 concerts a year, putting his salary at $US12,000 per concert — a “barbaridad” (atrocity), he said blisteringly.
“If this were a rich country” maybe it would make sense. “I don’t say that he [Parisotto] is not good. But aside from that, what do we have in the orchestra? There is a lot of turnover. It’s not a consolidated group.”
Indeed, there have been new firings in the orchestra, even of recently hired musicians from outside Mexico, based on what they say are questionable reasons, such as the need by their superiors for authoritarian control.
Álvarez also noted that at present only 16 percent of orchestra musicians are Mexican, sharply down from the past. “There is a federal workers law stating that Mexican companies must employ at least 90 percent Mexicans. I don’t know if it applies to the orchestra, but it should.”
By contrast, in a 2015 report in this newspaper, Orchestra General Manager Arturo Gómez stated that at the time “roughly 52 percent [were] Mexicans and 48 percent foreigners” and “the tendency will be 50-50, foreigners and Mexicans.” He underscored that “Mexican law says that if the quality of the music isn’t high enough among the Mexican players, we can hire foreigners.”
Besides the fact that Gómez’s rosy projection has not come to pass, another anomaly is the employment of Parisotto’s wife Mónica Anguiano as Artistic and International Relations Manager, a post that pays $3,000 U.S. dollars a month.
Álvarez called this nepotism. “The director of a public handicrafts institute hired his daughter and they were both fired. So Parisotto gave his wife a job. Why isn’t she fired too?”
The investigators are hammering the Secretary of Culture and orchestra for other excessive expenditures.
“For two operas in 2015, they spent 8 million pesos and received only 2 million in ticket sales,” Álvarez said. “That’s a big loss. The orchestra gets 40 million pesos a year as a subsidy from the government, so they have a budget, but they also have a lot of costs. If you look at the financial statements, you see they’ve been losing money every year. 2013 was the last year they were in the black. In 2014 [the year Parisotto took over], 2015 and the first semester of 2016, they’ve been in the red. It’s crazy to handle the orchestra this way.
“Deputy Kehíla Kú of the Cultural Commission is surprised about all this. She wants to know what happened,” Álvarez noted, adding that Kú has asked state authorities to audit the orchestra and expects a report in around a month.
Meanwhile, perhaps relying on executive privilege in making the first move and following the tradition of profligate spending by incumbent governments who leave their debt to successors, the Secretary of Culture and the orchestra move ahead in their established fashion. Verdi’s opera “Othello,” set for late November, will feature several international heavyweight soloists — U.S. baritone Michael Chioldi, U.S. tenor Issachah Savage, Latvian soprano Maija Kovalevska, U.S. tenor Harold Meers and Russian bass Grigory Solviov — each charging between $US50,000 and $US100,000, according to an informed source, for their month-long stints in Guadalajara, which include weeks of rehearsals and four performances over two weeks.
Between these salaries and those of the Mexican soloists in Othello, said the source, there will be a huge chasm.