https://www.change.org/p/to-eu-and-european-goverments-jona…

To Europe Almost eighty years ago, in the abyss of the deadliest war in history and under the « Blitz », in a London that had become the last bastion of hope for free mankind, the great Winston Churchill, when asked to cut funding for the Arts to support the war effort, responded with an incomparable panache « Then what would we be fighting for? ».
We, artists, humbly invite those for whom this answer is an immeasurable and intangible truth, to sign this petition, in order to express their support for the idea of a society where beauty and culture must not disappear and of a Europe which is in duty to preserve the most beautiful legacy of its own civilization: Art.
At the time of confinement, the broadcasts, offered graciously by major theaters, but also by the participating artists -let us not forget it- are only an expedient versus the magnitude of the catastrophe represented by a serial cancellation, mostly without any compensation, for all artistic contracts. Obviously, the success that these broadcasts are meeting paradoxically attests to the public’s attachment to « living art ». This passionate public knows it, we live it: the lyric art is consubstantial with the « boards », our stages, that two millennia still have not worn, and the current digitalization, as it appears, is only a magnificent substitute for a fragile emotion. We artist are fragile, hence the world of Opera too.
Dear friends from all over Europe and the World, who share our musical brotherhood and appreciate the true value of what we bring every day to our society, know that your signature will be a fundamental support for the present and the future of the lyric world, but, beyond, to all the performing arts professions, now seriously threatened, whose activity so naturally permeates life, that everyone has even lost any consciousness of it. Support the artists, support an idea of Life that helps Life.