Television
Passing the buck
Edward Heathcoat Amory
The performing arts, from the high ground of opera, to lower slopes of ballet, to the modernist mean-streets of film and finally to the desert wastes of television, have one thing in common. Despite pre- tending an interest in the great themes of love and loss, death and birth, war and famine, their favourite subject is them- selves. From films like Singing in the Rain, to operas such as Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos and Capriccio, narcissism comes nat- urally.
The plots follow a well-charted course. Performers are attempting to put on a show. Behind the scenes problems threaten its success. These are overcome in a tri- umphal final scene, and the curtain comes down, closing both the actual and fictional productions. The House, the 1995 television documentary about the Royal Opera House, was in this tradition. Behind the scenes, administrative and personnel prob- lems made Covent Garden look like a shambles; on stage, the show, magnificent- ly, went on. Subsequently, this series, which made absolutely gripping viewing, became a uni- versal scapegoat. The programmes were blamed for the Royal Opera House falling into disrepute. They were accused of encouraging viewers to believe that public subsidies for the arts were being wasted. They took responsibility for spawning a host of inferior imitations, in which flies were attached to every conceivable wall, and the dull lives of hundreds of boring people transmitted directly to the nation's living-rooms. The House, said the critics, may have been fascinating, but it was dam- aging, unfair, defamatory, irresponsible and dangerous. Which is presumably why view- ers enjoyed it so much.
The• most notorious incident in this infa- mous series was when the head of market- ing and public relations at the Opera House sacked one of his subordinates, and then told viewers how difficult it had been for him. Keith Cooper, the man with the hatchet, was subsequently ejected himself, and went on to work as a waiter in Shep- herd's Bush. Then he was asked by the company that made the original series to present a follow-up programme, charting the House's extraordinary fall from public grace. It was shown on Monday (BBC 2).
Sadly, this time, the cast had learned their lines. Instead of the candour of the original series, all the various performers were on their best public behaviour. Each character in the Covent Garden tragi-com- edy was at pains to pass the buck. Gerald Kaufman blamed Jeremy Isaacs, Isaacs blamed Kaufman, Mary Allen blamed everyone, and everyone pointed the finger at Lord Chadlington, who refused to be interviewed. Little or no attempt was made to make any sense from this morass, per- haps because Mr Cooper could not be trusted to umpire a game in which he had played.
It came across as a sad-sour obituary for an opera house, although presumably the current team, led by Sir Colin Southgate, would claim that reports of Covent Gar- den's demise have been exaggerated, now that Sir Richard Eyre has advocated anoth- er huge injection of public funds. Mr Coop- er's programme, however, left me wondering whether it deserves yet more money. The original documentary was, despite the chaos it revealed behind the scenes, a compelling advertisement for opera and ballet. After watching it again this week, I bought tickets to see the Royal Ballet in their temporary home at the Coli- seum. Having watched Keith Cooper's update, I wanted to cancel the booking.
Not one of the participants attempted to make the case for public subsidy. Jeremy Isaacs complained that, in France, 'the President of the Republic would just have written a cheque [for the new opera houser Keith Cooper remarked that when Covent Garden first bid for lottery funds it had not thought through the case for state funding. Nothing seems to have changed. In this introverted world, it appears to be taken for granted that a worker on the pro- duction-line in Dagenham should subsidise a national opera house. None of those involved in this sorry drama has learnt that most obvious lesson: if you want more money from the taxpayer, you must first explain to the public why you deserve it. Narcissus must, for a moment, raise his eyes from that limpid pool and address himself to his adoring public.
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