Others are allowed to reduce them to starvation wages, and the alternative is hitting the highway and hoping to scrape a living together as elite musicians in groups that pay even less and don’t fulfill them like the job they worked their whole lives to get. That’s ultimately what the musicians are trying to call attention to. Unfortunately, the following performances and events have been canceled due to a strike by the Chicago Federation of Musicians Local 10-208: -Lyric Uncorked.

We’re all poorer than the people who pay the bills, but if we all take shots amongst ourselves, arguing over who has a bigger crumb, we lose sight of the greater unity among us and the yawning chasm between us as the patrons of these organizations. On Tuesday, the music stopped for the Lyric Opera of Chicago just as the company began its 64 th season. The strike at Lyric Opera: Should arts organizations be more like airlines The Lyric Opera is experimenting with the number of seats available for an opera. Yet they make less than a starting electrician and will never come close to earning the same wage as a mediocre lawyer!

If you studied music, you know how challenging it is to attain that level of expertise. The musicians of Chicago Lyric or any major orchestra are Olympic level athletes and performers, every last one of them. It’s an incredible experience attending an opera or a symphony concert, and we should be willing to pay what it costs to give the people on stage a living wage and the kinds of lifestyles we enjoy.

We have so much access to music that we don’t think it’s fair to pay X dollars for a night watching hundreds of people making art together.

Part of the issue here is the undervaluation of entertainment.

Lyric opera strike