Continental divide
Tom Sutcliffe on what Nicholas Snowman's career says about different styles of arts subsidy
Nicholas Snowman, now aged 60, is one of only three British impresarios running a company in Europe (the others are David Pountncy at the Bregenz Festival and Sir Peter Jonas in Munich). So he is in very select company. And his career has given him a telling perspective on the relative advantages and disadvantages of the British and French ways of supporting the performing arts.
Snowman is the boss of Opera national du Rhin, where he is lavishly provided for. The company was created 30 years ago by the towns of Strasbourg, Colmar and Mulhouse (which all, at the time, had their own opera companies) on the suggestion of Germain Muller, a local actor who was adjoint a to culture in Strasbourg — by far the largest and grandest of these three Alsatian cities. After a short time, the new company became 'national', meaning serious extra funding from the French government, which now provides 26 per cent of its subsidy.
It matters to France that Strasbourg is a sort of European 'capital'. Just across the Place de la Republique, opposite the opera, Stephane Braunschweig is running the biggest theatre company in France outside the Comedic Francaise, as well as the largest national theatre school.
Snowman has two orchestras at his beck and call for 50 per cent of their time each, one in Strasbourg, the other at Mulhouse, and two opera houses much the same size as Glyndebourne — plus the use of three smaller stages in Colmar and Mulhouse. None of his subsidy of almost £11.5 million goes to fund the orchestras. It pays for 34 ballet dancers, a chorus of 44 (bigger than that at Covent Garden), a young singers' studio, numerous guest performers and an establishment totalling 260 salaried employees. The current season offers eight operas, a roster of late works under the generic heading 'Vendanges tardives', which is very evocative in Alsace, including Parsifal, Theodora, Les Boreades, Beatrice et Benedict, La Flute enchantee and Thomas Ades's The Tempest.
Forty-five per cent of Snowman's subsidy comes from the three municipalities. Their grants are increasing by 1.5 per cent above inflation year on year, a very different story from the standstill grants and endless staff cuts and retrenchments Snowman had to cope with at the South Bank in London. As it happens, he has inherited a million-euro deficit in Strasbourg, and been told by local politicians to get rid of it quickly. When interviewing him for the job, they asked if the budget was sufficient (to most Brits it looks like a bagatelle). He at once committed to upping sponsorship. At present that is a mere 80,000 euros, with extra support in kind from local businesses to the tune of 500,000 euros (photocopying, for instance, or meals at Crocodile). Only one-fifth of his £14 million budget comes from box office or sponsors.
His subsidy is indeed huge beside Scottish Opera's standstill grant of £7.4 million per year. Opera national du Rhin has almost twice Scottish Opera's subsidy, though, for example, it pays for a ballet, while Scottish Opera doesn't. Scotland's company is losing its chorus but has been told by the Scottish Executive to maintain its 60-strong orchestra. Strasbourg boasts an orchestra of 115 (Mulhouse's is 54), and if Snowman had to pay for them it would cost him £2.5 million.
Snowman's career as impresario has followed a fascinating path through the different styles of arts subsidy. His first 'job' was at Glyndebourne assisting the legendary Jani Strasser, from whom he learnt opera planning. He founded the London Sinfonietta straight out of Cambridge, with George Christie as chairman and David Atherton as conductor — the latter conducted the operas with which he had launched the Cambridge University Opera Society. The Sinfonietta's birth was a hit, thanks to John Tavener's Jonah oratorio, The Whale, quickly taken up by Ringo Starr and brought out on the Apple label. Before the orchestra's debut Snowman had called on John Cruft, then music director for the Arts Council of Great Britain. To his amazement, he was awarded a grant for an orchestra that was then just a figment of his imagination.
The BBC wanted to broadcast The Whale. Unfortunately, the Sinfonietta had never done a BBC audition. The producer Eric Rosebery slashed the red tape by importing the whole performance into a studio. Two years later, the Sinfonietta's series of Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies and Goehr was saved when Stephen Plaistow and Michael Hall promoted BBC studio concerts of the programmed works to fund the lengthy rehearsals required. These days British red tape is more oppressive; subsidisers more risk-averse.
Snowman engaged Pierre Boulez to conduct the Sinfonietta on tour just when the conductor was about to become chief of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the New York Phil. In 1972 Boulez invited Snowman to France to manage his IRCAM programme. He stayed till 1986. His _wife Margot Rouard is a professeur at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs. IRCAM, based next to the Pompidou Centre, was a showplace for British architectural skills — Ove Arup, Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano. Snowman was ultimately its artistic director for nine years. Michel Guy, the French minister of culture at the time, gave him a huge budget to form the Ensemble Intercontemporain, which remains the only contract contemporarymusic orchestra in the world.
There followed a frustrating time running the South Bank from 1986 to 1998, which involved a constant round of evasive financial tactics. Snowman's answer to five years of standstill grants was a whole programme of residencies, including a controversial choice between the Phil harmonia and London Philharmonic, ultimately resolved by involving both in the deal. The artistic highlights of his collaboration with Amelia Friedman and Graham Sheffield were a Birtwistle festival, visits by Berio and Stockhausen, and the knockout quality of visiting orchestras. The downside was what Snowman dubs the two-facedness of the Arts Council'. Every scheme for rebuilding or improvement ran into the sand because nobody could ever come up with the money. He felt he was being constantly led to the altar and abandoned there.
Appointed to run Glyndebourne from September 1998, he seemed to have achieved his goal in life. It had long been obvious that opera was his chief love. Part of his impact on the South Bank was altering the Queen Elizabeth Hall to accommodate David Freeman's Opera Factory, one of the resident South Bank companies. 'Of course it was a bit my particular ego-trip converting it for opera,' Snowman concedes, though it also allowed the hall to present bigger orchestras and an ambitious dance programme.
He was totally unprepared when he was ousted from Glyndebourne after two years. The problem was the ecology of the place. Glyndebourne is a family business run on the Mrs Beeton principle that cheapest is best, Singers' fees have always been non-negotiable. Snowman made a big impact in a short time, snatching the brilliant young maestro Vladimir Jurowski from under the nose of the Welsh National Opera and renewing the Sussex repertoire at top speed with three new stagings a year for the first time in the festival's history — a pace they aren't maintaining, though the board at the time encouraged him to put his foot down hard on the accelerator. In a sense Glyndebourne can do anything it wants, as the rebuilding of the opera house showed. The challenge is not lack of subsidy, but the nature of the vision.
He hadn't realised he wasn't quite the boss at Glyndebourne until he invited Simon Rattle to conduct Hippolyte et Aricie. He was firmly told, 'We are a Handel house. We don't do Rameau.' Putting Peter Sellars, Anish Kapoor and Rattle together to stage 1domeneo was his idea, as was engaging David McVicar and Christoph Loy. 'Peter and Simon in my exile period were some of the people who were very kind to me, and that's why Theodora has been allowed out.' Sellars's famous Glyndebourne staging is at Strasbourg later this month.
He's now been at Strasbourg for a year and a half, and is having a whale of a time. The real joy of running a European opera company as artistic director and boss is that you inherit an entire establishment to serve you and the institution. Strasbourg's beautiful opera house is about to be modernised, bar a sudden shortage of money. In France, especially in Strasbourg, that surely won't happen. He whispers naughtily, 'Well, you know, it's really a German house — when we have Lieder recitals there's never any need to provide translations.'
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