Music stops: Vitality prices shut Hungary theaters for winter

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — A theater in Hungary’s capital will sit by means of a chilly and quiet winter after its managers selected to close it down fairly than pay skyrocketing utility prices which can be placing a squeeze on companies and cultural establishments throughout Europe.

The 111-year-old Erkel Theatre in Budapest, one in every of three efficiency areas of the distinguished Hungarian State Opera, will shut its doorways in November after exponentially rising energy bills made heating the 1,800-seat constructing unsustainable.

“We needed to resolve how we will save,” mentioned Szilveszter Okovacs, director of the Hungarian State Opera. “Although it hurts to resolve to shut Erkel for a couple of months, it’s utterly rational.”

The establishment’s power payments have turn out to be “dearer by eightfold, typically tenfold … the order of magnitude is big,” Okovacs mentioned. “One thing wanted to be performed as a result of, in any case, folks’s wages … are an important.”

The short-term closure of the Erkel Theatre is only one of many instances of cultural establishments in Hungary struggling to remain afloat as excessive inflation, a weakening foreign money and power prices take a heavy monetary toll. It’s an instance of the pain hitting countries across Europe as energy prices skyrocket due to Russia’s war in Ukraine, forcing some factories to shut down, making life dearer and fueling fears of an impending recession.

Hungary’s authorities in July declared an “energy emergency” in response to rising costs and provide disruptions linked to Russia’s warfare. It additionally made cuts to a well-liked utility subsidy program that since 2014 has saved the payments of Hungarians among the many lowest within the 27-member European Union.

Because of this, many businesses and households saw natural gas and electric bills jump by as a lot as 1,000% from one month to the subsequent.

In an effort to curb power consumption, Hungary’s authorities ordered a 25% reduction in the use of electricity and natural gas in public buildings — together with in cultural establishments — and mandated that their heating be saved to a most of 18 levels Celsius (64 levels Fahrenheit).

Beata Barda, director of the Trafo Home of Up to date Arts in Budapest, mentioned her theater’s electrical energy payments have risen threefold since June and that there’s an “uncertainty issue” in what sort of fuel payments they may obtain going into winter.

To chop prices, the theater will stage round two-thirds of its regular winter program, isolate components of the constructing that don’t must be heated and scale back the frequency of rehearsals that require full stage lighting.

“We’d wish to keep away from shutting down or having to cancel performances, so clearly we’ve obtained to chop down in all types of how,” Barda mentioned.

With inflation in Hungary at almost 16% and the national currency reaching historic lows against the dollar and euro, households too are scuffling with rising costs — one thing which might result in a decline in theater attendance and a subsequent spiral of monetary troubles within the cultural trade, she mentioned.

“Our audiences have wallets, too, and their bills have additionally risen,” Barda mentioned. “How in a position or prepared will they be to come back to the theater? This can be a actually essential query.”

Within the sprawling Comedy Theatre of Budapest, one of many oldest within the metropolis, the lights within the constructing’s decorative foyer and winding corridors have been shut off, even on working days, to preserve power.

The fuel invoice for the 130,000-square-foot theater has gone from an annual 40 million Hungarian forints ($92,000) to 250 million ($577,000) — a virtually sixfold enhance.

“Till now, we might pay our utility payments with the ticket gross sales of two or three folks out of each 100 within the viewers,” mentioned the theater’s monetary director, Zoltan Madi. “Now, we should ahead the ticket worth of each second particular person towards paying our utilities.”

The struggles confronted by theaters in Hungary should not restricted to the capital. Native governments across the nation have introduced that theaters, cinemas, museums and different cultural establishments should shut for winter to keep away from getting hit with excessive heating and electrical energy prices.

Because the power disaster deepens, extra of Hungary’s theaters could possibly be threatened with closure — one thing stage director Krisztina Szekely of the Katona Jozsef Theater in Budapest mentioned would have unfavorable penalties for the cultural lifetime of Hungarians.

“I imagine that if these establishments falter or are unavailable in any metropolis or society, it would have a major affect on the psychological state of the society,” she mentioned.