Arts
Neatly ringed
Rodney Milnes
The most depressing thing I have ever seen, apart perhaps from Terry Bands's Parsifal, was a birch forest in Ardnamurchan that had apparently been sold for some fell purpose. Every single tree had been neatly ringed. I was told that its was the most economic way of dispos- ing of the foregt, far less expensive and far less trouble than cutting it down. The trees were all gradually dying, turning the land- sca„ Pe into something like first world war Handers. Even cutting down trees is against my religion: slowly, callously Murdering them seemed inhuman even by Ltile not exactly encouraging standards of humanity. This, give or take the odd detail (such as the absence of a profit motive), is roughly What is being done to the arts by the present administration. An increase in Subsidy to the four national companies of less than two per cent, given the rate of Inflation, is simply ringing them. The Whole business is typical of the dreary, half-hearted fashion in which the arts are approached in this country. Someone somewhere decides at some stage in post- war Britain that the arts should be subsi- dised. That may or may not be the right decision (I happen to think it is, but I would, wouldn't I) but having taken it, soMeone else decides that they are not going to be subsidised adequately. Money never has been and never will be available Come Opera on the scale that it is in Europe. ‘-ome along, we're British, backs to wall, Muddle through, it will be super fun. Well no, actually. True, we are famous for the quality of the product in the field of Performing arts that we muddle along with, but we could be a great deal more famous, and there is little fun to be had along the Way. Having decided not to subsidise opera Properly, the powers that pretend to be tell Managements that private sponsorship is the way to make up the shortfall, but of arse they wouldn't dream of providing !aX incentiv es to encourage sponsorship, Income for which is a pea in a bucket when It comes to the turnover of the major ‘°r8anisations, while benefits accruing to the Lew sponsors chased by too many organi- sations are, well, at least a cauliflower. _ Anyway, sponsorship doesn't work. ;v1anagements will deny it with their dying breath but few sponsors are going to support out-of-the-ordinary projects while be Faust is in the offing. Come on, be honest, hands up all those managements Who have had to postpone Busoni's Doktor Faust because they couldn't find a sponsor. Hands up those companies who will be able to mount any new productions under present circumstances without a sponsor. Shortage of money brings hidden com- mercial pressures. Why on earth, I asked naively at a fashionable NW3 dinner party, had Covent Garden engaged John Schle- singer to direct Rosenkavalier? Because it will guarantee them a video deal came the answer. Now comes the astounding news that, having struck an imaginative blow for Verdi by performing Don Carlos in French, the Royal Opera is reverting to the bad Italian translation, not for any of the flannelling excuses given at the last press conference but because they have set up a video deal and the company in question wouldn't risk marketing Verdi's master- piece in the language in which it was written. Is there no one in that building with an ounce of artistic integrity? Yes, they would say, but we can't afford it. Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral. Under-funding is a convenient fig leaf for bad managements.
Members of managements not fawning on potential sponsors are likely to be engaged in industrial relations, since short- age of money hands more power to those who already have it. We all know about stagehands getting paid more than most of those who stand on the stage and sing, but no opera house could possibly afford to get into a Scargill/Thatcher situation and sit it out — they would simply close. I wonder if Sir Peter Hall will achieve the 100 redun- dancies he is seeking? And the more people engaged on un-artistic activities, the more tempting it is to employ yet more people to do what they should be doing. Again, managements will hotly deny it, but in the 20-odd years that I have been on the fringe of the business, the permanent staffs at the metropolitan opera houses must have damned near doubled. Parkinson (no, the other one) knew all about that. Work is created, totally unnecessary work, and we all have our favourite examples of both that and of prodigious overspending. And not just in the opera houses: the Arts Council is a great swelling wen, steadily churning out oceans of bumf that no one in their right mind and certainly no one outside that self-generating bureaucracy needs to read. I repeat the Great Wheat- croft theory of the Arts Council: all you need is one deeply sensitive artistic person, one high-powered secretary, and one cheque book. I apply for the job (the first one, I mean).
The point of the ring-cuts is that they have no point. We will all squeal for a bit, opera houses will cut the odd production, the NT will close the odd auditorium. The real problems — duplication, over-staffing and so on — will continue. No one will grasp the nettle of the four orchestras, any more than they will the desirable necessity for a radical reorganisation of operatic life in London. For a start, why not privatise the Royal Opera, as my respected col- league from the Sunday Telegraph serious- ly suggested, reeling from the impact of that dreadful Rosenkavalier? It would probably survive the shock, and the ENO, a company with a recognisable artistic policy rather than one that lurches from unplanned success (Turandot) to planned disaster (Aida), could do with some of the money saved. But nothing will happen, cuts will ring us all, occasionally we'll insult each other on Kaleidoscope, but we'll muddle through and it will all be super British fun.
Except of course that if the GLC decides politically not to support the ENO to the tune of million, then the funning will have to stop.
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