Austria's cultural elite will meet at the Burgtheater in Vienna tomorrow to discuss a question that is dividing artists throughout the country - "To go or to stay - is artistic freedom in danger?" Ever since Jorg Haider's far-right Freedom Party became part of Austria's government some artists have been calling for a cultural boycott to accompany the diplomatic freeze imposed by Vienna's EU partners.
The French conductor Sylvain Cambre ling announced his departure from the Alpine republic with the words: "I cannot work with people I regard as fascists." Austria's leading playwright, Elfriede Jelinek, has banned all performances of her plays in her native country - a gesture famously made by Thomas Bernhard in his will more than a decade ago.
The director of the Salzburg Festival, Gerard Mortier, is cutting short his contract and the festival's most generous individual sponsor, the US philanthropist Betty Freeman, is withdrawing her support.
The Austrian Poetry School in Vienna is not even waiting for Haider's cultural commissars to close it down - the school will, of its own accord, close for a year in protest.
"When a political party hostile to artists and incapable of the civilised use of language comes to power, this cannot be a good thing for the school of poetry which draws on multi-ethnicity and the traditional plurality of languages in Vienna," the school said in a statement.
A cultural boycott would undoubtedly wound Austria's national pride and damage the tourist industry but many Viennese artists believe that it could also have the perverse effect of strengthening the right-wing government. Theatre directors Peter Stein, Peter Zadek and Peter Brook have joined with the composer Pierre Boulez to call for a measured response to the political events.
"The theatre people won't join the boycott. We'll carry on doing serious theatre here," said Luc Bondy, director of the Vienna Festwochen.
Film producer Franz Novotny believes that now more than ever artists should stay in Austria and create a noisy opposition to the new government. "The only people who are going are those who can afford to go, but it's important that the rest of Europe shouldn't isolate the Austrian people as well as the government," he said.
Haider has never made a secret of his contempt for left-wing artists, whom he has described as "pseudo-intellectual good-for-nothings, show-offs and layabouts who squat in houses and claim social security". His party has frequently targeted artists during election campaigns, characterising them as publicly subsidised purveyors of elitist, immoral works.
The new government has promised to reform the system called Proporz, under which supporters of the governing parties were appointed to the top jobs in everything from banking to broadcasting. Many in the arts, however, fear that the "independent" figures who will now occupy key posts may reflect Haider's own cultural attitudes.
"The Freedom Party is not democratic. It has no sense of democratic discourse. As soon as you have a different opinion, you are defamed. They would like to remove the term `contemporary art' out of the culture altogether. Haider wants to strengthen regional culture instead - that means yodelling concerts," said Mortier.
In his nine years as director of the Salzburg Festival, Mortier has transformed it into one of Europe's liveliest cultural events. However, many Austrians resent the changes and hanker after the more traditional, autocratic style of his predecessor, Herbert von Karajan.
"It's interesting to think who let these right-wing extremists into power: the People's Party and with them a prosperous, conservative middle class who dream of the old bliss of the waltz and like to quote from Fledermaus - Glucklich ist wer vergisst (He is happy who forgets). This is part of my audience," Mortier said.
