Content Warning: There is some explicit language in the content of this article. 

On August 6, the head of the Slovak National Theatre, Matej Drlička, was informed of his dismissal by an officer from the Ministry of Culture. He was one of the many directors who were dismissed by the new Minister alleging Drlička had criticized her ministry and had an alleged preference for foreign over Slovak opera singers, among other reasons.

The dismissal set off a wave of protests with thousands of people taking to the streets of the Slovakian capital to protest against the country’s culture ministry. The crowds claimed that the dismissals were a political purge by Robert Fico’s populist left-wing Smer-SSD party, which won parliamentary elections in Slovakia and formed a coalition government with the center-left Hlas and nationalist SNS parties. The dismissal also saw many musical figures resign from their posts in Slovakia including Robert Jindra and Martin Leginus. Opera Europa also condemned the move and Karolina Sofulak withdrew from her engagement with the National Theatre.

OperaWire recently spoke to Drlička about his dismissal and the rise of authoritarian governments in Europe and around the world.

OperaWire: When you were fired from the Slovak National Theatre, was this something you were expecting or did it come as a surprise?

Matej Drlička: This government was installed after the parliamentary election a year ago. So as soon as the culture segment learned that the Minister of Culture would be nominated by the Slovak Nationalist Party, we knew we would be in trouble. The Slovak Nationalist Party is well known, in a negative way throughout the years. This party always brings the worst politics into the lives of people. Usually, the leaders are basically ashamed of our country either because of their race or homophobic or anti-Hungarian or anti-Romani views. They’re always beyond the red line and very far right.

It is also the oldest Slovak political party which was founded at the end of the 19th century, so they should have learned, but they didn’t learn anything. Every new chief president of the party always brings a new level of atrocity. The Minister of Culture is a pretty well-known figure in Slovakia because she was a TV presenter. TV presenters are very popular in our country. So this lady was fired by her original employer, which is a private television station. She was fired because of her racist expressions on social networks and then she founded her own disinformation channel on the Internet, where she was spreading the news that Covid was made up and the craziest disinformation you can imagine. So when we learned that this lady would be the Minister of Culture, we all knew that we would be in trouble and that this was not good news.

Of course, she has no idea about arts whatsoever but she has some knowledge about media because she was a TV presenter.

The elections were democratic and we could be unhappy, but we couldn’t question the results of the elections. So we all said, let’s wait. The first thing that she did was she sent a letter to the Czech Minister of Culture, which, for some reason, she put it on Facebook. And the letter was just ridiculously stupid and everybody laughed because there were grammatical mistakes. She was speaking about some sort of new era of cooperation between Czech and it was just a ridiculous letter saying nothing to our neighbor, which is pretty much a well-developed country. So we said this lady is going to just be funny. But later we learned that she would be dangerous and very soon, she started to be very offensive towards the minorities, especially the LGBTIA+ minority. Then she started to speak about her vision of the future of arts and culture. Her vision was that “Slovak culture will be Slovak and no other.” So this quote became very famous.

And so there was a discussion of if we are in Slovakia, what other cultures should it be? Even if you do a Verdi opera, you speak about Slovak culture because it’s interpreted in Slovakia. Every country that performs international repertoire still makes it a national opera, it’s still a national theater, and you somehow appropriate it even though it is an international repertoire.

But we realized that she’s extremely uneducated, extremely incompetent and that she doesn’t care. And then she started to fire people. First, she fired the director of a gallery of arts for children, which is a fairly small but important museum, and replaced her with her neighbor who lives in Austria and is a yoga teacher. But you can imagine the surprise because the minister said that “the Slovak culture should be Slovak and no other” but hired someone who lives in Austria.

There were a lot of petitions against this decision and some protests in front of the gallery. There were some letters of support from abroad and asked her to reconsider the decision.

Then they started to attack the culture funds, which is one way of financing independent arts and they changed the law so they could gain political control over the funds, which for the last 15 years were put aside from the ministry so that there was no political influence possible. All the money was distributed through independent expert juries.

Now they want to put it back so that the minister can control it then. They also changed the law of the Slovak National Television, so that they get it under control, especially the news.  So there was a lot of destruction.

Because Slovakia is a very young country, the mechanisms in culture that were functioning, and were very fresh. The funds for art, the funds for audiovisual, and the way the directors of the national institutions were being chosen were working well. Results started to be seen. But she basically ruined everything that was installed by her predecessors.

OW: So did you start hearing that there was a possibility of losing your job?

MD: I was receiving messages concerning myself. So the Slovak National Theatre has drama, opera, and ballet. When I was leading the theater, the order of popularity in our theater was the drama and the sales of the tickets were hitting 95 percent of occupancy. And one of the reasons is that all the actors also act in Slovak either in TV, in series, or in movies.

Then there is ballet, which is also almost sold out and we get 96 percent but these numbers were achieved during my management. And opera when I arrived in 2021, the occupancy was around 54 percent and we grew to 86 percent. So we did a lot of reforms in terms of opera.

The Slovak National Theatre has played a very important historical role in Slovak history and has always seen the actors of the Slovak National Theatre speak out and it was always the wish of all ministers to control the Slovak National Theatre and to have a hand over it especially in the drama department. Politicians were always afraid of the Drama Department, especially those who were openly autocratic.

Under my management, I gave total freedom to the director of the Drama Department. So the repertoire we were doing was pretty much critical, not towards a specific politician, but it was very critical towards our own country, how we behave, and towards Russia, among other things. But of course, this is what theater should do. And of course, this made them very upset.

So first, I received messages from friends who told me I should probably go easy on the programming and should ask my actors to do more comedies and less critical works. So we were gently being warned that we were going the wrong way for the politicians, especially for the minister. And we said, “fuck off.”

So we continued with our brave programming and the reaction of the public was extremely positive. So all the premieres and the reprises were always packed.

In April-May, I started to feel the real resistance from the ministry. They started to cut the financing because the main control of the ministry over European institutions is the budget. We are like all the other national theaters or all the other big theaters in Europe, we are 80 percent financed by the state or by the region and 20 percent by the income from the tickets and sponsors. This is pretty much the standard in all European countries.

So they started to cut all the money for investments which meant we couldn’t buy a new technology for the theater and we couldn’t afford a new website, which was still quite okay. But we just felt that they were trying to make us upset.

But then they announced that there would be major cuts in the main budget, which is basically the salaries of the employees. So that was like the first wave and a clear signal that they were not happy. And since we didn’t really change our strategy of programming, I started to speak up openly in public on social networks or when I was a guest and criticized the fact that I felt that Slovakia was going to the far right, the same way as Hungary.

I also said that freedom of speech was being censored. Auto-censure was something that I started to notice in other theaters from my colleagues. To get the money and to live a quiet life, they started to auto-censure themselves.

So I took the risk and I spoke out quite openly. There was one moment during a TV Oscars-type gala that was streamed and I was giving a prize there. So I had a speech where I was very open about how I felt about the politics of the country. And basically, I got the message that I was dead after this and I had gone too far.

And then I was just basically waiting for my dismissal which came in the middle of summer on the sixth of August. I was on my sick leave that day. I was sick for two or three weeks and the last few days, I was still recovering. And during this sick leave, one morning, they came to my door and I was wearing a bathrobe. So I was dismissed in my bathrobe from the officers of the ministry. And it became a funny story in Slovakia and there were a lot of cartoons and memes about this.

So when there was the first protest with around 18,000, there were a few hundred that were wearing bathrobes in the protest as a symbol of how they dismiss General Directors in Slovakia.

OW: Many people stepped down from positions as soon as they heard you were dismissed from your position. Robert Jindra stepped down from his position at the Košice State Philharmonic and then the director of the “Un Ballo in Maschera” withdrew.  How do you feel about the support you have received?

MD: There are three areas that I have to talk about. As far as the management of the Slovak National Theatre goes, when I was dismissed, the Economic director stepped down and then the director of opera stepped down, among others. My management is no longer there.

There is a new interim general director. It’s also a blonde lady from the media. She was a TV presenter and there was major resistance inside of the theater, especially from the drama department. So she’s realizing that she’s driving a car that is trying to reject her. So she feels very lonely in the theater.

Then people like Robert Jindra stepped down from working as chief conductor in another orchestra, but he was very expressive about the minister. He’s a Czech conductor and he left Slovakia, saying that this country is going in the wrong direction. Then Karolina Sofulak, the stage director of “Ballo in Maschera,” said that she could not imagine working under these conditions for the theater. So it was an important gesture and was an extremely warm message that they sent to us. I received a lot of messages and support after I was dismissed from the opera in European communities and a lot of theaters.

The minister and prime minister were sent letters where they were asked to reconsider their decision. That was signed by the most important theaters in Europe. But of course, the prime minister doesn’t read these kinds of letters and the minister has no idea what the Vienna State Opera is. So they don’t care and we didn’t change their mind.

The Slovak National Theater will continue somehow. But the biggest problem of the Slovak National Theatre is that the new interim director has no clue how to run a theater and things are falling apart. The second problem is that ticket sales stopped and they have a major problem. When we did this “The Cunning Little Vixen” it was sold out like 100 because the community knew that it was our production. It was a successful production and that’s the end of an era.

Everybody knows that something ended with this production and now, when I look at the sales of “Butterfly” or whatever, it’s 30-40 percent of sales, which is terrible. So, I think they’re going to have big, big problems.

OW: So the community is also supporting you in a way?

MD: We proved over those three and a half years to the operagoers that the reforms we did were correct. The quality of the orchestra, of the choir, of the guests, of the productions all went up. I started to change the theater from a repertoire to a production house because of the quality. We started to work with International stage directors as well as Slovak stage directors. We wanted to try to open up to the world. The opera community is not as immense as you can imagine in a small country. It’s a very small group of people and they see the difference and they know when the difference is happening. And now they’re expressing their opinion by not attending anymore.

So that’s the Slovak Theatre.

OW: What actions are you taking to continue spreading the word about this new minister?

MD: There is a strike action which is going on and I joined this platform which is of people working all around the country from all different fields of arts and culture and the creative industry. So we called this cultural strike. It’s strike awareness, telling you that we are ready to go into a hard strike if you don’t recall the Minister of Culture. So it’s thousands of people, hundreds of institutions, and we do press conferences where we try to show the general public what the minister is doing.

Of course, the Prime Minister and the Minister are pretending not to listen. I do know that the coalition is starting to crack and I know we will achieve some kind of results. I don’t know if it will lead to the dismissal of the minister, but we are definitely gaining the attention of the general public and media. So these activities are going quite well.

OW: How have other institutions been affected?

MD: There is the reality of the other state institutions, which is the biggest danger of what’s happening in the fields of culture. My colleagues, who are general directors of the 30 state institutions, most of them just look down and they want to survive and they comply with the Minister’s ideas. And this, for me, is the saddest story.

Inside their institutions, there are people who are on strike awareness but the representatives of the institutions, the CEOs shut up and they get in line and follow what the minister says. They think it’s a good strategy.

I spoke to many of them and they said, “Matej, for you, it’s over. But we want to survive. We have to protect the institutions from inside and we have to protect our employees.”

I told them they were wrong. If they think that by doing this, they will protect their employees, they are wrong. The Minister will end up cutting all of their budgets and in the end, they will fire them. And at the end, they will destroy many of these institutions.

Funnily, one of the guys that I was trying to convince the most was the general director of the Slovak National Museum, which is a fairly large institution that has 14 castles all over the country.

And I told him, “your institution is so big that if you speak up and if the others would speak up they can’t fire all of you at the same time. I told them to join the fight.”

I initiated this conference call where I was trying to give them some warrior spirit. And I said they fired me because I was the only one who was speaking up. And I told them if they entered the arena, we could reach results.

So this friend of mine from the Slovak National Museum, said, “Matej, maybe you’re right, but I want to stay.” But in the end, he was fired.

OW: After your dismissal was there a plan for the National Theatre?

MD: When they dismissed me, for four weeks, they didn’t find anybody to replace me. That’s one of the absurdities of the whole thing. They fired the director of the National Theatre and they have no backup, and for four weeks, there is no backup. And then they come up with this blonde lady who is crying every time she goes to work.

Because the replacement, it’s not an authority from the Theater World. It’s a nobody.

OW: The Minister of Culture said that one of the reasons for dismissing you was that they wanted to have more Slovak artists and fewer International Artists which they claim you put first. I know that there are not many international soloists at the company. Can you explain what the Minister of Culture meant and what was the disconnect?

MD: Disconnection is a nice way to put it. But they lied and one of the reasons why they dismissed me was according to them I was bringing political activism to the theatre, which is not true. Being critical of society is not political activism.

And one of the reasons was also that I was giving too much space for international soloists. I wish we had money for that, but luckily several Slovakian singers have made international careers like Pavol Breslik, and Štefan Kocán, among others. So bringing those singers back home brought the public. But they are still Slovak singers.

So politicians openly lied when they said that I turned the opera away from Slovak Soloist and gave it to international singers.

OW: Right now the world is going through a transition period and we’re seeing a lot of autocratic governments come to power. Do you think these protests will help bring back some clear stability?

MD: I don’t think that the protests from the cultural communities will be enough. What we are trying to do is to be the first wave and trigger bigger protests. This is what has always happened in the history of Slovakia. The artists were the first ones who stepped up and who started. But of course, it’s a small community and with every protest, we see that the politicians get more and more resistant. You need hundreds of thousands of people on the street to make them fear. So 20,000 people protesting is nothing to our politicians.

I’m positive about the fact that we all see it and people are not completely blind. I think we will achieve something but the negative part is that what is happening in Slovakia is now starting to happen in smaller sizes in Austria, Holland, Germany, and France.

I’m not a political historian or a political strategist but I’m a positive person and I think that by continuing and not shutting up, we will achieve something. But I’m afraid that the results are uncertain.

OW: What do you attribute to the rise in these extremist politics especially in Slovakia?

MD: The rise of Autocratic politicians and populism is something important to analyze. There are a lot of similarities between the way that Donald Trump speaks to his voters and the way that Orbán is speaking. So it’s not only strictly related to Slovakia. We see it all over the place, especially Europe, and North America.

Now, populism is the topic, and it’s different in every country. In Western Europe, it’s about the immigrants as it is in the United States.

In Slovakia, we don’t have any immigrants. So Slovakia, definitely cannot say that we have this kind of challenge. But what we have is the Russians and they are creating a Crypto War.

The cyber war with Russia is a reality and I think their main effort is now Slovakia, and people get fooled by this. So our current government is presenting Russia as the country that wants peace. And that’s it.

OW: So the spread of disinformation is not helping the cause. How do you think the arts world in general can help combat the misinformation and autocratic rise?

MD:  This is a question that I don’t know how to answer and it’s too difficult to answer. I think it’s very different from country to country.

I definitely have no idea about the measures and the size of the problem in the United States because I only have information from the media. So I think that the role of arts and culture is to continue and I think very soon in our country, we will have problems for culture. I think most of the people around me understand that we have to get ready for very tricky times, not only in independent culture, but also in the state culture.

Next year, there are plans to cut the budgets from 20 to 25 percent for state institutions, which will be for many of them the end, because they will not be able to survive. I think we are entering hard times, and I think there will be one moment when these people will realize it’s going to suck and they will have to fight.

Right now the problem is that people are afraid and think that they will somehow survive and that they will manage. But they will eventually understand that they will not manage. That might get us to the bigger wave of resistance and where I am confident that even though there is little optimism, we are democratic countries, and we are still united in our countries.

I think that if we have to stick to the idea of the European Union and we trust each other, we can survive. But we should only be the first wave. There need to be louder voices.

OW: What is next for you?

MD: Before taking the position at the National Theatre, I had several projects. I’m running a classical music festival in the capital city of Slovakia, “Viva Musica,” which was celebrating 20 years. I also run an artistic agency.

So, I come from business. I was an entrepreneur, so when I was dismissed, I just went back to my agency, which was functioning, well. So I just came back.

That’s the difference between me and most of my colleagues who spent their entire life in those institutions and they have no parallel life or parallel way to escape. So, I’m continuing with the festival and with the business.

I also became an activist and I’m going to organize a tour of discussions all over the country. I’m just building up a panel of interesting people from famous actors to musicians, and we are going to go to the smaller cities all over the country, to the far east of the country, and speak about what the ministry is doing and why it’s dangerous. So, this is one of my projects.

Since being dismissed, I’ve been spending a lot of my time with this open culture platform and this strike awareness. There are a lot of activities and we organize press conferences and prepare texts and files for journalists, and we start to we try to organize the community to continue the fight.