Montezuma’s revenge on European culture
Weird copyright decision by a German court today. The opera “Montezuma” by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was long believed to be lost. Recently, the score has been discovered in the archives of the “Sing-Akademie zu Berlin”.
The academy now successfully stopped a German music festival from putting on the opera, which was first performed in 1733 and was believed lost thereafter. The academy’s claim: It inherited the work, and therefore has the exclusive right to profit from it.
Functionally, this is a pretty juicy extension of the usual “author’s life plus 70 years” copyright. I am not exactly sure this contributes a lot to the public benefit, for which copyright, after all, is originally intended.
Another note: For those of you into music and Free Software, there’s a nice interview about the AGNULA project with Andrea Glorioso on CodexFlores.ch.