(31 Dec 2019) Striking Paris Opera musicians ushered in a new year of protest against President Emmanuel Macron's government by playing extracts from “Carmen” and “Romeo and Juliet” to a square steeped in the history of the French Revolution.
The spirited, makeshift performance on Tuesday on the front steps of the Opera Bastille served as a dramatic reminder of the rocky start to 2020 that awaits Macron, because of sustained strikes against his government's plans to reform the French pension system.
Musicians who have downed instruments since open-ended strikes started December 5 reveled in the chance to play for the crowd that gathered to hear them on Paris' Place de la Bastille, once the site of an infamous prison stormed by a revolutionary mob on July 14, 1789, and then demolished.
The crowd chanted for the abandonment of the retirement overhaul that would delay the eligibility age for full pensions from 62 to 64.
Macron wants to unify France’s 42 different pension plans into a single one, giving all workers the same general rights.
Paris Opera workers said that if applied to them, such changes would make their working conditions unbearable.
Currently, its dancers can retire at age 42; stage technicians and chorus singers at age 57 and musicians at age 60.
Negotiations between the government and unions are to resume in early January.
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