Will Waspe's Whispers
Sir Ascher Joel is a dapper Australian PR man who has already handled the Pope (when the Holy Father visited Sydney) and Captain Cook (on the bi-centenary of his Australian landfall). Now he is in charge of the fortnight's celebrations to accompany the opening of Sydney's costly Opera House — an event much postponed but now to take place, God and the construction unions willing, in October 1973. Sir Ascher's commentary on his rapidly expanding plans denotes a hard time ahead for Edward Downes, the Australian opera's industrious English conductor. "Sydney Opera House," Sir Ascher has been heard to say, "is a complete bloody misnomer. In the first place it's a symphony concert hall. I like symphony music. We won't open it with an opera. That would be the last thing. For one reason, I don't think the royal personage who will be in attendance — and in my view Her Royal Highness the Queen is the most obliging personality in the whole wide world — would want, or should be asked, to sit through a whole opera which she will almost certainly have seen before anyway."
In the Australian context, Joel and his attitude really count. Not only is he chairman of the Citizen's Committee charged with arrangements for what he calls "the biggest cultural event since the opening of the Taj Mahal." but he is also an influential member of the Federal House of Representatives, owns newspaper and radio and TV interests, and is on the board of the Sydney Opera House Trust.
He should not lack the sympathetic support of the present Minister for Cultural Activities in NSW, a red-necked farmer and prize-bull-breeder named Freudenstein who is on record with such remarks as, "La Boheme is far too grand an opera to have any popular appeal."
The mysterious West
At the other extreme the cultural activities of the British Council continue to entertain me. They keep quiet about them in this country, but I'm told they've just sent out a theatre company on a tour of South East Asia (forty performances from Manila to Chiang Mai) at a cost of £30,000. Their plays are an abridged version of Shakespeare's Henry IV and — wait for it — Pinter's The Birthday Party.
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