si...no me he dejado ninguna letra en el título no
.
Me refiero a la ópera "Motezuma" escrita por Vivaldi y perdida en la noche de los tiempos hasta hace más bien poco: un mes más o menos.
Entonces se presentó en Rotterdam. Pero inmediatamente empezó un litigio sobre los derechos de explotación de la obra encabezados por la Sing-Akademie zu Berlin e. V.
La cosa empeora cuando, para 16 y 17 de julio está previsto en el teatro de Barga http://www.barganews.com/operabarga/ la puesta en escena de la obra.
Como no entiendo nada de términos legales ni de propiedad intelectual, os corto-pego el texto
Who owns the performance rights to Vivaldi’s Motezuma?
Barely a month ago, Rotterdam and the music world generally celebrated the first performance of Vivaldi’s Motezuma since those held in Venice in 1733. Musicologist Steffen Voss reconstructed the opera’s score in large part from a manuscript he found while examining documents recently returned to the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin by the government of Ukraine. Kees Vlaardingerbroeck, the artistic director of Rotterdam’s De Doelen, declared, “This is the most important Vivaldi discovery in 75 years.”
The joy of that celebration all but vanished last week when the Sing-Akademie commenced legal proceedings in the Düsseldorfer Landgericht (provincial court) to enjoin performances of Motezuma scheduled for September by the Altstadtherbst Kulturfestival Düsseldorf. The Opera Barga Festival, which is co-producing the work with Altstadtherbst, is especially concerned in that its performances are scheduled for the 16th and 17th of July at Teatro dei Differenti in Barga, Italy. The Sing-Akademie estimates damages in the amount of €250,000 if the performances were to proceed. The court is expected to reach a decision on the 11th of July. It is not clear the extent to which this decision will directly affect Opera Barga because of jurisdictional and other legal issues.
Founded in 1791, the Sing-Akademie holds itself out as the oldest mixed choral society in the world. It amassed over the years a large collection of music scores (known as the “Notenarchiv”). During World War II, the Notenarchiv, together with other private collections, was transferred to Silesia for safe-keeping. These were ultimately found by the Soviets and transported to the Soviet Union. It was not until 1989 that scholars located some of these treasures in Kiev; and it was not until 1999 that the full scope of the holdings in Kiev was discovered. Negotiations for the restitution of these holdings soon followed. These negotiations were complicated by the Sing-Akademie’s failure to keep an adequate inventory of the Notenarchiv since the early 1800’s, thereby making it difficult to determine the true ownership of certain documents. Amidst great public ceremony, the Notenarchiv returned to Berlin in 2001, where it is presently in the custody of the Staatsbibliothek.
It is a near universal rule of copyright law that one who owns or controls a work of art authored by another does not own the copyright to that work. The law requires an express conveyance or assignment of the copyright. The Sing-Akademie is not claiming that it holds the copyright to Motezuma that is directly traceable to Vivaldi. Instead, it is relying upon an obscure provision of the German copyright law of 1965 (the “Urheberrechtsgesetz”) that provides, in pertinent part, that “any person who, after the expiry of copyright, for the first time lawfully publishes or lawfully communicates a previously unpublished work shall have the exclusive right to exploit that work.” [Urheberrechtsgesetz, Article 71(1) (translation by the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”))] A substantially similar provision is found at Article 85ter of the Italian copyright law (Law No. 633 of April 22, 1941, as amended). See http://www.wipo.int/clea/en/clea_tree1.jsp for the full text of these and other legislative texts collected by WIPO.
The Sing-Akademie’s claim of first publication is predicated on its offering of reproductions of the Motezuma manuscript through its web site, which began in January 2005. See http://www.sing-akademie.de/20050119.htm. These reproductions do not include the libretto or Mr. Voss’ reconstruction.
The Sing-Akademie’s claims are disputed on several grounds. First, it is argued that the offering of reproductions on the Sing-Akademie’s web site does not constitute a publication or communication as contemplated in the statute. Second, it is argued that the performances of the opera in 1733 were the first lawful communications. Third, it is argued that the Sing-Akademie is not the first to publish the manuscript inasmuch as microfilm copies of the entire Notenarchiv have been available for public viewing in the Ukraine since on or before 2001. See http://www.huri.harvard.edu/abb_grimsted/K-7.html.
According to Nicholas Hunt, the President of Opera Barga, the Sing-Akademie’s actions are particularly disturbing because it did not know what it had until Mr. Voss recognized the manuscript and made its contents known to public. Its actions contravene all notions of what rightfully belongs within the public domain.
If successful, it is likely the Sing-Akademie’s actions will have a devastating effect upon scholarly pursuits such as those of Mr. Voss, which is of a piece with its conduct since the restitution of the Notenarchiv in 2001. As Patricia Kennedy Grimsted of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute observed:
Unfortunately, as of March 2003 none of the restituted Sing-Akademie Notenarchiv is open to the public in Berlin — neither the originals now on deposit in the Staatsbibliothek nor copies of the microfilm prepared in Kyiv, nor even unpublished finding aids. . . . Ironically, as this article goes to press in March 2003, as a sad outcome of the generous Ukrainian act of restitution, musicians and researchers who want to acquaint themselves with more of the manuscripts and printed part scores from the Sing-Akademie collection will still have to journey to Kyiv, where the Ukrainian archival copies of the microfilms and the inventories of the collection prepared after the war at the Kyiv Conservatory are openly available for research in the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art . . . where the collection had been housed since 1973. . . The fact that the Sing-Akademie music archive was a private collection may have assured its return, but that same fact at least thus far has been limiting public availability.
Antonio Vivaldi aún no se ha pronunciado sobre el tema....
