Jenna over at Schmopera recently published a piece on companies comping or refusing to comp critics with reference to recent spats at La Scala and Opera Australia.  I was going to comment but on reflection I felt that I had rather more to say on the subject than was appropriate to a comment.  I was also reflecting on a brief conversation I had on Sunday with a fellow blogger in which he described his relationship (briefly and in passing) with the company whose event we were attending as “parasitic”.  I didn’t and don’t agree with that statement.  I think there’s a symbiotic relationship between “critics” (for want of a better word) and the promoters of the product they review.  Arts organisations need publicity.  It’s part of what puts bums in seats.  Critics need material to write about.  We get comped because we do something that companies need.  Not because we are special little snowflakes.  Not because there’s some sort if inherent media right to free tickets.  And above all not because it’s somehow to do with free speech; a term that has been abused so much in the last week that it almost makes me want to throw up.  So, as far as I am concerned an opera company has an absolute right to comp or not to comp an individual or an organisation as they choose.  Of course if one chooses to blacklist the Sydney Morning Herald’s main critic it’s going to have repercussions and, frankly, if I were editor of that paper, Opera Australia would be ignored.  And, equally frankly, the actions of that company seem to be the sole work of a petulant GM with an oversized ego, but there you go.

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