DIARY
JEREMY ISAACS The loudest noise in the office of the general director of the Royal Opera House is the sound of music — not Mozart or Wagner, but the monotonous pulse of rock music from the dress shop downstairs. Any- one who takes the scenic route, up drab stairs and along dingy corridors, to visit me at work gets the picture: this is an impover- ished institution, requiring physical renew- al. Now that impression is compounded by our need to let the boardroom and the rest of the ground floor on Long Acre for shops. Result: an income of f250,000 a year, and rock music playing in the back- ground during meetings. Yes, I know Mrs Thatcher urged everyone to stand on their own feet, but what would the sovrintendente of La Scala think if he came to see me? He might find it hard to take seriously the Government's claim that London is Europe's artistic capital.
Britain devotes a lesser proportion of public expenditure to the arts than any other nation in Europe, except Ireland: one far- thing in every pound. So the shoe pinches. The V&A is cutting back its services. The National Theatre finds it harder to put on plays with large casts, or to attract the finest actors and actresses — it pays less, in cash terms, than it did 15 years ago. The Royal Opera, whose subsidy is a quarter of that available in Paris, Berlin, Munich, Milan and Vienna, and markedly less than in Amster- dam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Lyons, charges high prices to make up the difference. We all know that the Berlin Phil- harmonic gets £19 million a year (the LPO gets less than £1 million) to ensure that the City boasts one of the finest orchestras in the world. But I did not know, till Norman Lebrecht revealed it in the Daily Telegraph last week, that Toulouse gives its orchestra more than the total grant to all British sym- phony orchestras combined.
Life at the Opera House was always a goldfish bowl, and now there's that series. 'I do congratulate you on it,' strangers gush, it is riveting viewing.' Well, that's nice for the BBC. But is it for us? On the whole, I think so. Believing in openness in public life, I took the decision to let the cameras 111 .I cannot now complain if they found incident, tension, drama and upset in the Year they Spent with us. But The House is long on emotion and crisis, short on exposi- tion and hard fact. It irks me that an intelli- gent viewer could fail to realise that we bal- anced the books at the end of the year, for the third year running. And I wish it had been made clear that the over-budget Sleeping Beauty, in Maria Bjornson's strik- ing sets, has recouped its cost at the box office over and over. But what The House has done is bring home to millions of view- ers who know little about us something of what life backstage is like and the commit- ment that goes into it. No one could have been surprised at the odd bout of artistic temperament. But some, at Covent Garden even, may have gasped when ballet dancer Iain Webb took his shoe off and we saw his bleeding, bandaged foot. Requests to be put on the mailing list have shot up, box office has lifted and a smitten French countess, I am solemnly informed, has offered a substantial sum for the body of the director of corporate affairs, Keith Cooper.
Dear Sir Jeremy. . . . ' The first task of the morning is the post: the angrier the correspondent, the more likely he is to address me above my station. Last week's praise came from a patron who discovered, just before curtain, that he had come on the wrong night. He was shown to a vacant box. My usual technique with complainants is the soft answer. Occasionally I attempt a riposte. My best shot, I think, was at a chap who waxed indignant at our employing a tenor he said could sing neither in tune, nor in tempo, nor in Italian. He wrote — post-BCCI, pre- Barings — on the letterhead of the Banking Supervision Division of the Bank of England, and wanted a straight answer to a straight question: how could this be allowed to hap- pen? I offered this response: The Royal Opera House aims at perfection, but does not always achieve it, rather, I suppose, as might be said of the Banking Supervision Division of the Bank of England.' I got the one-word reply I wanted: 'Touché.'
The Queen came on Tuesday to our cele- bration of the 50th anniversary of the perfor- mance that reopened the Royal Opera House after the second world war. As Princess Elizabeth, she had attended that performance also. All those who danced in The Sleeping Beauty that night and who could still be with us appeared on stage again. A few days earlier, they had reminisced at a `Lunch and Listen' for the Friends of Covent Garden. At the end of that, the founder of the Royal Ballet companies, Dame Ninette de Valois, in her 98th year, stood up to speak. In ringing tones, she proclaimed:
Most of you will know that I have not heard a word that has been spoken, but I have enjoyed watching the expressions on your faces, and I shall be able to read a transcript. It has been a privilege for me to be here with such good friends of the House, who have supported it for 50 years. I will be gone myself, but you will continue to support us in the few bumpy years ahead, and the 50 beyond that.
There spoke the voice of old England, or rather, come to think of it, since Dame Ninette was born at Blessington, Co. Wick- low, of Ireland.
How fascinating if Whitehall too were a goldfish bowl, and cameras had been present at the famous meeting of Clark, Trefgarne and Waldegrave which relaxed, but did not alter, policy guidelines on the sale of arms to Iraq. No such luck. But the Scott report and the hoo-ha it engenders have sent my mind back before Sir Nicholas Lyell to a former Tory law-officer of the Crown, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, rechristened in these pages by Bernard Levin as Bullying-Manner. He led with his chin once, in sarcastically congratulating his maverick back-bench col- league Humphry Berkeley for 'for once, sup- porting the Government'. Berkeley sought out the Attorney and roundly abused him, adding as a final crack, 'If you should con- clude that anything I have said to you is defamatory, I strongly recommend that you seek competent legal advice.'
The Opera House job keeps me at it all hours; getting the development going and making a viable plan for closure, as well as just balancing the books, add to the load. It is only in Suffolk, at weekends, that I escape and take succour from five-mile walks and Turgenev. But last week, for a magic hour, I got away from my desk, crossed Floral Street and eavesdropped on rehearsals of Semele and GOtterdammerung. Suddenly, it all seemed worthwhile again.
Previous page
