Italy ups its arts funding.(World News)(Brief article)

Daily Variety, February, 2007 by Vivarelli, Nick

Italy has upped arts funding 17% to a total 441 million [euro] ($573 million) for 2007 in the first tangible sign of the center-left government's more pro-arts stance compared with the days when Silvio Berlusconi ran the country. Culture minister Francesco Rutelli has announced the boost for the single fund known as FUS, which includes film, theater, opera and dance subsidies.

While not huge in monetary terms, the increase is significant since the national budget deficit has been ballooning. Film funds, which had been frozen for most of Berlusconi's five-year reign, have been upped 14.4% to $103 million. That is slightly more than the $95.5 million earmarked for theater, but way less than the $272 million allocated for opera, in this opera-mad...