ARTS
A long way from Utopia
The Eyre Report is an anodyne document which ducks the real questions, says Michael Tanner Anyone who isn't able to give at least a rough account of the distinction between art and entertainment should keep silent on the future of the Royal Opera — so should quite a lot of people who are able to. In the Foreword to 'The future of the lyric theatre in England' Sir Richard Eyre shows that he realises that they are not syn- onymous, at least: 'The arts entertain, they give pleasure, they give hope, they ravish the senses, and above all, they help us to fit the disparate pieces of the world together; to try and make form out of chaos.' It is a promising beginning to a report to the House of Commons, specifically to Chris Smith; though I wish that Eyre had added that at least as important as making form out of chaos is the job of making chaos out of form, if the form is of a reprehensible, excluding, smug and self-glamourising kind.
At the end of the Foreword, admitting a utopian streak, Eyre writes, strikingly: 'I know how to bring this Utopia into being, and so does the Prime Minister: education, education, education.' In one way what he says is exactly right, yet in another it is hopeless. For we no longer have, or at any rate work with, a concept of education which is sufficiently contentful to bring anything much into being, let alone Utopia. There is plenty of education around, including a grotesque amount of 'higher education'; yet those who are receiving it, its maleficiaries if I may coin a term, are certainly not being put into a state of receptiveness to opera. On the contrary, to the extent that they are being taught at all, it is to ignore or `deconstruct' the boundaries between high art and popular art, in the interests of a pursuit which embraces and transcends them both: cultural and media studies. One can hardly blame Eyre for not wading into that fetid water. Yet without a fundamental study of the nature and purposes of educa- tion, including education in practising and appreciating the arts, a report on the Royal Opera, on the place of state funding versus private sponsorship, and all the rest of the issues that Smith couldn't face thinking about for himself, and wouldn't have been able to in any case, Eyre was bound to end up producing the anodyne document which is the substantial part of his Report.
Whether he thinks that his fine remarks in the Foreword constitute a sufficient basis for discussion of the future of lyric theatre in London (forget the provinces) it is impossible to judge. In fact, they only show that he has a hazy awareness of there being such a thing as a background against which the issues he was asked to report on are comparative matters of detail. One understands the problem: the situa- tion of opera in the United Kingdom is miserably uncertain and confused, thanks to many factors; and the last thing, it may be felt, that is needed to sort it out is any probing into the aesthetics of the art-form itself, interminable and inconclusive as they always are. It's a matter of where the tax- payers' money is going, and when far too much of it is landing in middle managers' pockets, as Eyre demonstrates that it has been, or when it is financing countless com- plimentary tickets for the purposes of ingratiation in the wrong quarters, these urgent matters both need to be and can be rectified without a philosophical discourse. That is absolutely true, and one hopes that, however little notice is taken of Eyre and it is safe to say that very little will be, since it would be hard to tell on the whole whether his recommendations were being implemented or ignored, they are so vague — at least these abuses will be rectified. Yet they are only symptoms of the underly- ing problem, of what opera houses, of international standing or of more purely local appeal, are for, of the point of having operas performed, which in its turn can't .£12 billion boost to NHS duck the issue of which operas it is worth spending a lot of money on and which it isn't.
The sheer thought of such a question as that last one determining public policy will smack to many people of incipient totali- tarianism. Who is to say that it is worth hir- ing expensive international stars, conductor, director, for Don Giovanni but not for Andrea Chenier? Surely, it could be argued, it is the weaker works which need more loving care to be resuscitated or to have their weaknesses concealed. And so on. Yet that ducks the issue: the works at the core of the operatic repertoire are, for the most part, works of art, even if most of them are flawed. The ones that are revived to vary the diet and get revalued are often meretricious, nothing more than once- enjoyable ways of passing the time; in other words, faded entertainments. Still, the reply will come back, who is to say which are which, and how can we tell without staging a neglected work how impressive it is, as was demonstrated last year by the Royal Opera's courageous staging of Pfitzner's Palestrina? Good question — yet people normally say that when they have no answer. An answer is imperative. As it is, of course, decisions are constantly taken to perform one opera and go on neglecting another, so any mindless talk of 'elitism' in connection with such choices would be, as usual, the merest humbug.
What is needed is a panel of seriously concerned people who decide which operas are performed, in the light of the most lofty purposes that opera can serve — as stated, for instance, in the Preface to Gluck's Alceste or in Wagner's Opera and Drama and reading that should serve to weed out the weaker spirits. The setting up of such a panel would no doubt be a matter of the most bitter dispute, as would the delibera- tions which ensued, supposing things ever got that far. But I can see no alternative. Once opera is acknowledged, as it never quite is in England, or at any rate London, as an art-form which may offer experiences of supreme intensity and depth, then com- plaints about public spending on it could be confidently answered, even if our politi- cal masters remained in a state of sheer bemusement about what was being said to them. It might be respectful bemusement, the most one can ever hope for from a politician.
Why am I not talking about Eyre? Because he begs all the questions I am talking about, in order to produce some- thing which can be acted on. And in order to do that he has had to adopt the language of the people to whom he is reporting, and their basic attitudes, in fact to join their club in a fairly comprehensive way. He doesn't say, perhaps because he doesn't realise, how much of an old boys' network unites those on both or all sides of the arguments about the Royal Opera and related issues, at any rate those who are in a position to do anything to remedy a des- perate situation. It comes out over and over again in his language how blinkered a member of the establishment he is. Other- wise he would hardly, in a report to the House of Commons, refer to the incoming general director of ENO simply as `Nicholas'. Such small things are revealing. Working in a way that he hopes will have some effect has meant that he has not con- fronted any radical questions, so it is not surprising that Private Eye got it right when it summarised his 'revolutionary' recom- mendations as 'a) continue to stage opera as before; b) try not to lose any money'.
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