SIR,—In his article on State patronage recently, Mr. Charles Wilson
appears to be concerned with the cultural health of the provinces. He finds them barren and their activities under-subsidised, and he pins the blame for this on the Arts Council. This diagnosis is palpably faulty, for if the Arts Council has only ill million to spend, does Mr. Wilson seriously suggest that Covent Garden, Sadler's Wells and the main London orchestras should be sacrificed for provincial opera? What he blames on mal- administration is simply due to shortage of money, and the impossibility of financing both metropolitan and provincial opera is the fault of the inadequate financial provisions of the Government.
But it soon becomes clear that Mr. Wilson finds it convenient to pillory the Arts Council because what he is fighting for is not the cultural welfare of the provinces, but the case of the Carl Rosa Opera Trust. One's sympathy for this body is sharply halted by recollections that Mr. Wilson was one of a small minority of trustees who did not resign from the trust after a long dispute which resulted in singers, orchestra and producer walking out. Mr. Wilson carefully avoids mentioning his connection, though he might have done. What he cannot do is to take advantage of the long period since the dispute to suggest that the Arts Council's reasons for withdraw- ing the Carl Rosa grant were 'palpably absurd,' when it is only too easy to recall the inadequacy and evasiveness of Mr. Wilson's defence of the remain- ing trustees. Nor can he blame the crisis at Sadler's Wells on the Arts Council when it was sparked off by the LCC's intention to reduce the Sadler's Wells grant, not by Arts Council policy.
The fact is that Mr. Wilson has been less than candid. No one blames him for wanting the Carl Rosa case reopened. But he might go about it in a way which is more open, and seems less concerned with concealing his own real interest in the affair.- Yours faithfully,
JOHN TUSA
2 Wordsworth Grove, Cambridge
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