The gala opening next month of the new season at La Scala in Milan is one of the social and musical highlights of the year, attended by politicians, businessmen and top artistic figures. Legions of music fans fear, however, that the fat lady is warming up in earnest, and that this time it is all over for the opera houses of Italy.

La Scala’s glittering moment is at risk from severe spending cuts by the Government of Silvio Berlusconi, as it struggles with a huge public deficit and the global credit crunch. Sources in the opera world say that opera companies are having to reduce drastically the number of performances and are even facing closure.

One director is even proposing that the opera houses “optimise their resources” by each staging one new production a year and rotating it among them.

The heads of Italy’s 14 opera houses issued the warning after a crisis meeting with Sandro Bondi, the Culture Minister. The list of the affected is a roll call of famous musical institutions: La Scala, the Rome Opera, the San Carlo in Naples, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, the Verona Arena, La Fenice in Venice and the Carlo Felice in Genoa. La Scala has been going through hard times since it reopened in 2004 after a three-year renovation. Last year a performance of Verdi’s Requiem had to be cancelled when La Scala’s 800 workers, including 135 musicians and 107 in the chorus, walked out in a row over pay and contracts, claiming that the number of performances staged had increased from 164 to 273.

This year strikes forced the cancellation of performances of La Bohème, conducted by the rising young Venezuelan star Gustavo Dudamel, and of John Neumeier’s staging and choreography of La Dame Aux Camélias. State funding for the performing arts is due to drop from €560 million (£470 million) this year to €379 million in the 2009 budget.

Gianluigi Gelmetti, musical director of the Rome Opera, accused the Government of “short-sightedness”. In an open letter to Mr Bondi in Il Messaggero, the Roman daily, he said that an art form that represented Italy in the world was at risk from bureaucrats.

Sergio Cofferati, the Mayor of Bologna, home of the Teatro Communale opera house, said that the bankrupt airline Alitalia was a “flourishing business by comparison with Italy’s opera houses”. The Verona Arena was taken over by a government-appointed administrator this summer after similar moves in Naples and Genoa.

The Government blames the opera houses themselves, which it says are overstaffed, inefficiently run and plagued by strikes. An estimated 70 per cent of their expenditure goes into staff costs for 5,000 employees.

Francesco Ernani, superintendent of the Rome Opera, said that Mr Bondi had offered to hold further talks over the next month on reforming opera finance, with tax breaks for private sponsors and investors. The situation “has never been more worrying”, he said.

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