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DAVID
POUNTNEY
THE FUTURE
OF OPERA
given on Saturday 13 February
2000
at The Royal Over-Seas League, London, UK
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Il curatore di questa web
site ringrazia di cuore la ROYAL PHILHARMONIC
SOCIETY per il permesso di pubblicazione della conferenza IL
FUTURO DELL'OPERA di David
Pountney, insigne regista in questo periodo impegnato a Zurigo
nell'allestimento dell'opera di Hector Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini.
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First of all the good news: there is
a future for opera! Despite all the financial, social and political
gremlins that should perhaps make the future of opera questionable,
its future is assured by simple artistic truth: a story told on a
stage through music remains a compellingly attractive experience.
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For some people, the term
opera is so emotive, so bound up with particular
political and cultural prejudices, that they must either possess or
destroy it: they want to argue the pointless question of what is and
what isnt opera. Avant Garde composers in the 60s and 70s who
felt the compulsion of story telling with music but were embarrassed
by the implications of the term opera called it
Music-theatre; their polar opposites on Broadway and
Shaftesbury Avenue call the commercialised version Musical
Theatre. Spot the difference! But Opera simply means
work and a quick trawl through its history reveals the
immense range of entertainments which have fallen into the ragbag of
this meaningless name: in the beginning we had plays lightly and
deftly set to music - music that extended but never obscured the
text. We had spectacles combining the slightest of dramas with
expensive scenic effects, comic interludes and dancing side by side
with moments of sublime feeling. We had highly formalised court
dramas in which the text receded under a welter of elaborate music,
and the action became a set of ritualised poses. Then we had the
rediscovery of character and plot, and the reinvention of integrated
music and drama. And we are still only at the end of the 18th
century.
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Thank God not all of it has been
serious: we have had buffo comedy derived from Commedia
delArte, political satire, vulgar knockabout, realist comedies,
surrealist comedies, sentimental romance, comedies of high idealism,
comedies of national destiny and domestic impropriety, and quite lot
of comedies that are not funny at all. We have had melodramas with
plots like thrillers, philosophical tragedies, kitchen sink squalor,
rural idyll, romantic isolation, urban realism, historical operas,
contemporary operas, fantastical operas, and quite a lot of opera
with no plots at all.
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But all of this immense richness of
invention and variety comes down to the same simple formula: a story
is told, on a stage, through music.
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Well, that is the past. What is the
future?
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One thing that the diversity of the
past tells us is that the future will almost certainly be a variation
on something that has gone before. So many possibilities of combining
music, text, action and image have been rehearsed over the centuries
that we are not likely to find anything totally new. On the other
hand, we are equally likely to find that almost any model of opera in
the past will prove a fertile starting off point for opera of the
future. Can we attempt to control this development, or is this the
inevitable function of the Zeitgeist and we can only run to keep up?
To some extent that is obviously true: we can only go in the
directions which are predestined by the wider fluctuations of
culture, politics, social and historical development. But I believe
there is an immense responsibility for all of us who in one way or
other curate the tradition of opera to look at what history has left
us, perceive how it has been influenced and steered in the past, and
make our minds up in a passionate and committed way about the where
we should like to steer the ship into the future. All kinds of
currents and tides may blow in opposite directions, but dogged
tacking will still produce results.
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Because of the compelling power of
the basic idea of opera, and because of the richness of repertoire
handed down to us, I take it as guaranteed that simply on the basis
of its tradition alone opera will trundle on well into the future.
Those who do nothing more than live like parasites off the past I
cast into a particularly unpleasant circle of hell. There is no
greater betrayal of custodianship than that. Therefore, the future of
opera for me is not about how many more performances of La
Bohème there will be in the next century and nor about whether
this Bohème is dressed up as something else, performed on the
Internet, recycled in Car Parks, made accessible to millions by being
projected onto turf at football matches or howsoever manhandled and
manipulated.
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It is about which stories we would
like to tell in our new century, and what music we will tell them
with, and which audience will we find to listen to our stories. When
we have answered those questions, we can go back to La Bohème
and relish its genius in the proud knowledge that we have earned our
right to the fruits of the past by our diligent pursuit of the needs
of the present. And God forbid that the needs of the present should
be fobbed off for the next century with the idea that it is
sufficient to re-locate La Bohème in Brixton to answer this
point. I am talking about new work. I am talking about a hard and
rigorous truth that unless you are feeding the new, you have no right
to live off the old. Sadly, there are very few opera houses anywhere
in the world who could hold up their hands and claim to fulfil that
condition. So let me say it again, loud and clear: what we inherit is
an incredible cornucopia. Those who exploit it without adding to it
are betraying the heritage of which they purport to be the
custodians, and they should be cast out!!
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Millennium fever has one - only one
- advantage, and it certainly isnt dome shaped. It gives us the
easy sense of being able to look back over an arbitrarily defined
period of history, and feel we can get a grasp of it. Discussing the
period 1822-1913 just doesn't have the same feel. What the historical
perspective of this century tells us is that it is not my insistence
that we must renew the repertoire that is out of line or radical:
that was the norm in Europe before the war. It is the gradual
tendency since the war to do fewer and fewer new pieces, and rely
more and more on the old which is the break with tradition. This is
the aberration, in terms of operas long history, and we need to
know why this has happened in order to discover how best to buck the
trend.
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The common sense answer is that new
operas were popular then: they were called things like Turandot and
Rosencavalier. As so often with common sense, it isnt quite
true. What is true is that the flood of creativity which supplied an
incredible tally of new works ran undiminished, especially in
Germany, right up to the war. Within this rush of works, some of
which have been recently unearthed by the illuminating Entartete
Music series, there were difficult and problematic works, like
Wozzeck, which had nonetheless a considerable succes destime,
and the works of Janacek - ironically the most important body of work
to be written this century - which were not really to receive any
sustained success for another sixty years. There were also a plethora
of works which filled the bill at the time, but were destined to
vanish without trace. These are in many ways the ones which should
interest us now, not because we want to revive them - God forbid -
but for the lesson they teach about the balance of new repertory.
No-one can expect to fill a season with new masterpieces. On the
other hand, an ordinary, well made film can tempt one to go to the
cinema even though one may never want to see it again: it fulfils the
proper need of the audience to be told a new story, and it keeps the
balance between works which are stimulating just because they are
new, and works which are stimulating because they are ultimately
profound. There was a place then for difficult and ambitious works
which stretched the boundaries of peoples understanding and
appreciation, as there should always be, but these difficult works
were balanced by others which had a more work-a-day approach to
entertaining their audience. This balance allowed the public to
preserve its expectation that it could still approach new work with
the anticipation of enjoyment and understanding. This expectation has
entirely vanished, except amongst a tiny coterie of enthusiasts,
critics and specialists. It has been replaced by the dead hand of
worthiness, the weary assumption that one is doing ones duty by
attending yet another evening doomed to failure. The sharpest
evidence of this is that before the war, new works would almost
simultaneously appear in several different houses: now, this is
unheard of. New work is assumed to be a flop before it even starts,
and opera houses only want the worthy kudos of mounting the world
premiere, which might better be known as the world
dernière.
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New opera has a lousy image. Most
sensible punters wouldnt touch it with a barge poll, and with
good reason, because most of it has been produced by people with very
little understanding of the medium in which they were working,
virtually no practice in that medium, and a very unhealthy contempt
for simple theatrical craftsmanship, a contempt that of course
implies an equally unhealthy contempt for the public that is so slow
to understand and appreciate their work.
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Another important reason for this
lousy image is that about sixty or seventy years ago, the branch of
opera that was dedicated to entertaining the public in the most light
hearted and immediate way quietly packed its bags and walked
out the door. It smelt a rat. These people didnt want
entertainment, wit, communication, gaiety, or even the poignant
breath of sadness that keeps company with such things. The Viennese
operetta closed its shop, crossed the Atlantic, and re-opened as Show
Boat, the defining American Musical. Think about that work for a
moment: it handles the terrifyingly difficult and important theme of
race; it makes an epic sweep through the formative years of the
American century; it is certainly as much an opera about the United
States of America as the Bartered Bride is about Bohemia. Lets look a
bit closer to our own time. What is it about West Side Story that
makes it not an opera? In what way is West Side Story in a different
genre from Carmen? I used to use a spurious definition of the
difference between an opera and a musical: that an opera is a story
told through music, a musical is a story accompanied by music. I
dont believe it any more. There is more music in Carmen, and
some of it is more sophisticated than anything Bernstein attempts,
but in essence the music and the drama do the same jobs in both
pieces. Why should one be thought appropriate for the opera house and
the other not? In what way is Sondheim not an opera composer? Because
his music is sometimes rather thin? Meyerbeer made a great operatic
career with the thinnest music! Is not the Phantom of the Opera a
phantom of an opera? Of course I dare not mention that composer
here....but why not? Go and see that show, which is an excellent
entertainment, and you will hear that some of the time the composer
is striving to write opera, even if you feel he does not succeed. Why
is Miss Saigon padded out with hours of insufferably tedious and
ill-composed recitatives? Because they want it to be like an opera -
which of course means that the the audience wants it to be like an
opera -because people who put on shows like that dont do
anything the audience doesnt want. What the audience in that
case clearly does want is the sense of permanently hightened emotion
which is the central home territory of opera. But dont tell
them its opera - it would close the show!
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In other words, opera has lost a huge swathe of its
natural audience because it has forgotten how occupy its natural
bridgehead in the commercial sector - a sector which is in reality
only just round the corner, not a million miles away. Of course opera
houses do do Show Boat, West Side Story and Sondheim, especially away
from the highly specialised and expert commercial sector that we have
in London. And our two National Theatre companies have made a mint
from skillful ventures into musicals.
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But I am not talking about revivals. I am no more
interested in arguing that opera houses should be mounting revivals
of musical gems of the past, than I am in pushing for a Hindemith
cycle at Covent Garden. Thats just further exploitation of the
past, though if you can do it as well as Carousel and Oklahoma at the
National Theatre, good luck to you. What interests me for the future
of opera is that people can still write successful new musicals - and
lots of bad ones too - but nobody writes successful new operas,
except perhaps Mr Adams and Mr Glass. Why not? Fundamentally, I
suspect because they are not really trying to. People who write
musicals are governed by a harsh discipline: failure is very
expensive; success is a bonanza. And the ultimate judge is the
public. In the arid landscape of new opera, there is no such
discipline save the composers conscience, and no judges save
the tiny circle of his peers. Far from the public being the ultimate
judge, the public in this case gets the blame for being
conservative or lazy when the latest new
opera is a worthy failure.
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So who should be telling composers to work harder for
real public success? The management! That is their job, but it is one
which, in the face of a completely out of date romantic concept of
the inalienable rights of the artist, the management has by and large
abdicated. It would be a far healthier situation if managements would
make the decision that a new opera should be much more like a new
musical than a new opera. It should be subjected to the same kind of
ruthless commercial discipline, the same relentless re-working, the
same shameless search for success as a great classic musical of the
past.... like... Gounods Faust. Exactly! That classic 19th
century pot boiler is no more and no less than a superbly well
written and crafted musical, shamelessly playing to all the hot spots
of the time, and bringing it off with impeccable skill and tasteful
tastelessness. And it was produced of course by the Cameron
Mackintoshes of the day, the ruthless husband and wife team of
Carvalho. Its very instructive to read modern critics on Gounod
and Carvalho. Where, they cry, shall we ever find all those lost bits
of Faust that this brutal and predatory manager caused to be cut? How
can we re-discover the masterpiece that Gounod really meant to write?
Faust is brilliantly written - but Carvalho had a theatre to run, and
he MADE SURE it would be the most successful opera of all time. He
gets no thanks for it now, but I dont suppose that bothers
him.
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He may well have been an appalling bounder, but he
was not the helpless creature than modern opera management - in which
I have played my share - has become in the face of new opera. Partly,
of course, new opera has driven itself into a creative cul-de-sac
because that is where historical and cultural forces were leading it.
But equally, partly because the driver let go of the wheel, and
partly because there were people who actually wanted opera to be like
that. Important arbiters of taste worked hard to ensure that only
very particular musical and dramatic ambitions commanded respect, and
therefore performances; driving the public away from new opera was a
minor casualty in that campaign. Luckily, the arrogant phase of
modernism has past. There are many young composers in Britain who are
more than prepared to work at the idea of new opera as a vital and
communicative art form, not a worthy tribute to pseudo-intellectual
obscurities. But it is now up to managements to regain control of
this process in the interests of rebalancing the perception of what
new opera is. Composers need the occasional injection of managerial
realism, just like authors need editors. Some cigar-chewing realist
could have mentioned to dear Mr. Birtwistle, as he paced round his
lawn figuring out the march of the seasons, that if he passed the
dahlias more than twice the audience might be excruciatingly bored.
There will always be a place for difficult new works. But the era
when to be difficult was the first precondition of being acceptable
has passed, and had better be swept away very rapidly in time for the
new century. Opera has seen the musical walk off with many of the
best bits in its wardrobe: get them back. They were an integral part
of opera long ago. Find the stories that speak to people, and find
the music that makes them want to listen. That is the real meaning of
that horrible word "accessibility": never forget Cowards
famous line: Ah, the power of cheap music! The future of
opera is not about institutions, managements, boards, administrators:
it is first and foremost about new works. That is the only context in
which it will remain interesting to revisit the gems of the past.
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Meanwhile, I fear most of you cant wait for me
to get on to boards, managements, administrators, and talk about
opera houses rather than operas. I thought that for once, we might
discuss the art first. Perhaps some of you think that there
wont be opera houses: that the future lies on television, or
the internet. And I am sure a little bit of the future does, but I
do hope that the next century sees far more intelligent uses of these
media. Like the gramophone record and the CD, they can only help to
stimulate interest in the real thing. There is absolutely nothing to
be afraid of, and everything to be gained by being much more
imaginative and less reverential in the way we adapt opera for
mechanical media. I hope for instance that we have seen the back of
that excruciatingly tedious and inappropriate thing: the televised
opera relay. I have an uncomfortable feeling that someone in some
government department thinks that this is the way to persuade people
that opera is accessible. Actually, it is a way guaranteed to
persuade people that opera is a crashing bore. The televised opera
relay is terrible opera, and unspeakable television. If you are going
to put opera on television - and why not? - then it should first and
foremost be good television. Staged opera is too big, too long, and,
in close up, too ugly to be bearable on television. What television
needs is something short, brilliantly edited and full of visual
imagination. Like a pop video in fact. The thirty minute Rigoletto,
directed by Brian de Palma, the thirty minute Wozzeck, directed by
Ken Loach. Thats opera on television. And thats what
would lure people into the theatre, not stuff you switch off to go
and make dinner.
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And the internet: surely a superb tool for opera to
create specific material for use in education; surely a superb
opportunity to devise witty, stimulating and specific material
appropriate for the internets strange blend of jewels and junk,
fascination and tedium. But as with television, something to be
approached imaginatively and for itself, and nothing to do with
timidly recreating material which really belongs live, on a stage.
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That, in the future will remain operas home:
the dimension of real people bravely exhibiting their talents and
their flaws in the hushed companionship of the theatre. What a
powerful place the opera house can have in the new century of
enforced leisure! But how will this opera house be run? Above all,
who will pay for it?
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I have argued that an element of commercialism is a
vital component in the creation of new operas in the future. In doing
so I am reaffirming the tradition that operatic music has always been
essentially popular, vulgar in the best sense. Does that mean that I
see the institutional future of opera also as commercial? If Faust
was a musical, why cannot opera function within the disciplines of commercial
theatre? Principally, because we have refined and developed our ideas
of democracy, and its social implications. We have now a far more
inclusive and democratic notion of what society is than was the case
in Gounods time: then the gems of artistic perception were only
available to those who could afford a ticket. Now we should hope that
most members of our society could have financial access to the arts
if they wished to make the effort. That is why I am happy to insist
on commercial discipline in the running of an opera house, but I
would simultaneously like to see the vigorous reassertion of the
principles and ideals of public subsidy, which I believe should have
an ever more important role in the provision of the arts in the next
century.
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As I say that, I can almost feel someone write the
words: whingeing luvvie. But to whinge is to complain,
and to beg. On the contrary, I wish to assert a fundamental
principle of which I am proud: the arts are a vital component of the
health of a democracy. Power without imagination is a curse, and the
arts are the lungs of the imagination. Of course everyones
imagination is their own private property, and they may feed it and
nurture it in private without any assistance from the state. But the
democratic state should also recognise that the freedom of thought
which is the guarantee of its democratic probity is uniquely
stimulated by the contact with the imaginative world which the arts
supplies; and that this nurture of the imaginative world also has a
public dimension as well as a private one. The state depends on the
free choices of its electorate; therefore it should publicly honour
the means by which the communal imagination is stimulated, provoked,
kept awake, massaged, made healthy.
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Lets for a moment take a sentimental trip
through the last 50 years of British operatic history. The war ends.
There is that fervent spirit of idealistic rebuilding: the
extraordinary music and drama of Peter Grimes bursts into life at
Sadlers Wells. The Arts Council is founded. The Royal Opera becomes,
for the first time in its history, a permanent company. The Welsh
National Opera is built up around a maverick garage owner and
bus-loads of amateur choristers. The dashing young Alexander Gibson -
flash haggis they called him - gives up his metropolitan career and
goes back to Glasgow to found Scottish Opera. Stephen Arlen cons the
Arts Council into letting him move Sadlers Wells to the Coliseum
without ever quite knowing how it would be paid for: ENO is founded,
but not funded! There is the constant mirage of an opera company in
Manchester, but in the end it is Lord Harewoods sleight of hand
which leads to the establishment of Opera North in Leeds. A mixture
of pragmatism, cunning, idealism and improvisation lays down the
basic structure of a national operatic tradition. The result of this,
fifty years on, is that the British regional companies are some of
the most serious places of operatic endeavour in Europe - and I have
good standards of comparison - and that British singers, directors,
conductors are renowned all over Europe for their professionalism and
quality. It is a brilliant achievement and an inspiring story and yet
we are strangely confused and unable to celebrate or even defend it.
A politician, possibly well meaning, is five minutes into his job and
with one flippant remark - springing fully formed from the back of a
cigarette packet - shakes the whole foundations. The aberrations of
the board of the Royal Opera are seen as sufficient grounds to
contemplate demolishing what has taken half a century to build up.
The Welsh National Opera is the most significant cultural institution
that that country has ever had; it will shortly have a new home by
the water in Cardiff docks. But it is not allowed to call it an opera
house - indeed it has to avoid at every turn mentioning the word
opera in case the whole project collapses! The very existence of
opera is brought into question, as though the activities of a buffoon
like Lord Chadlington could vitiate performances of Mozart and Verdi
conducted by Bernard Haitink. The British have caught cultural
cringe! Why are we not more robust in defending the things we have so
painstakingly created? The future of opera will need people who are
able to stand up and proudly reassert the value of the thing itself
and its central part in a civilised society.
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Once upon a time, societies needed people who could
ride horses or sail ships in case there was a war. Now, society needs
people who can think in case there is an election. Even more
important, society needs forums which celebrate the communal
imagination. A society is a mechanism of shared power and should
understand the feeling of shared emotion. This is increasingly
important in an era when media is more and more private: a lonely
dialogue with a synthetic screen. Of course millions of people watch
the same television programmes, but they can only share the
experience the following day, examining the contents of last
nights ashtray. The simultaneous roar of laughter or of
amazement is a powerful experience - possibly frightening - possibly
deeply creative. A football team can express a citys communal
identity and the highly emotional participation of the spectators
gives them access and ownership of joys and disappointments
apparently out of proportion to a mere game. Likewise, a theatre can
express and touch a citys communal soul. In the theatre, a
society gathers together in the darkness and in the company of
strangers submits itself to a vigorous massage of the emotions. Like
football, the play may be light, the matter ephemeral, but the
feelings generated and shared in the audience are real. This is vital
and health giving: the sharing of such feelings is ennobling not just
for the individuals but for the society of which they are a part.
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The audience which enters the theatre must no longer
be nobles but should be, in however slender a sense, ennobled when
they leave even, or perhaps especially, if they have only been made
to laugh together. This is the answer to the constantly parroted
charge of elitism. The arts are the creative responses of
exceptional human beings who were able to compose, paint and write
down perceptions which were clear to their highly developed
imaginations whereas they might be obscure to the rest of us. These
perceptions encapsulate some of the most refined and profound and
joyous recorded responses to the human condition and opera, in
particular, is one of the highest expressions of that culture. Such
perceptions are clearly created by an elite group, those
whose imaginative antennae receive messages dim to others, although
these people as individuals are often lowly and impoverished. The
question is: who then owns these perceptions?
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The function of subsidy is to make these
elite perceptions the property of the electorate in a
democratic society. Relying on private or corporate donation to make
these purchases on our behalf does not at all convey the
same message. Society should take pride in this ownership as a thing
of value in itself even when each individual will not necessarily
wish to experience them directly. The government of that society
should take pride in funding and guaranteeing that ownership because
of the respect that implies for the electorate which chooses it. It
is no surprise that governments which wish to suppress liberty almost
always move rapidly to restrict and control access to the arts: we
may feel that no British government could be a threat to our liberty
but we have all the more reason to demand that our government shows
respect for the freedom of thought which is uniquely nurtured and
developed by access to the imaginative world embodied in the arts.
For New Labour to reform the constitution in the name of democracy
without acknowledging its responsibility to the wider intelligence
and sophistication of its electorate would be an act of dishonesty.
The Government has taken some steps in this direction, but
tentatively. It is pussyfooting around, and trying to get the credit
for supporting the arts without actually committing itself
wholeheartedly either in principle or in money. Opera may be
luxurious but it is not a luxury; it is an invaluable tool in the
health of a democracy.
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Subsidy might seem like a comfortable option for an
opera house, but it carries with it awesome responsibilities. The
private or corporate donor may be a difficult character to handle,
but they cannot bring with them the moral imperatives that are
implied by the state subsidy. These have for me primarily artistic
implications. I take it for granted that the opera house will be
efficiently and prudently run. This might seem like a rash
assumption, but the majority of opera companies in this country are
extremely well run, and deliver almost impossible value for money.
Since the point of the subsidy is to express the public ownership of
culture, exorbitant prices are anathema - or rather a swindle, since
the public pays twice. The subsidy must be adequate, and the prices
reasonable. Both parties must keep their sides of that bargain. And
no doubt there is an important role for sponsorship to top up that
subsidy, but only if it is recognised that there is an inherent
conflict of interest here which must be constantly addressed and
worked at. A sponsor wants reward for his gift, and that usually
means he wants his gift to be conspicuous. But if the point of
subsidy is to symbolise that art belongs to the public, it cannot at
the same time appear to have been sold to a corporate entertainment
outfit. If government expects private money to do too much work, it
is at the same time weakening the argument of principle in support of
subsidy; and the opera house must be constantly vigilant to avoid the
perception that business barons have walked off with public
property.
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The artistic implications are much more important,
and much harder to quantify. They start out with the sense that
artistic policy is based on an intimate dialogue with a specific
audience. An opera house must seem like a an endearing but
unpredictable and provocative friend. Above all it must have
personality - it must be something you can argue with and about, and
it must pay its audience and friends the compliment of looking them
in the eyes, and not staring into the far horizon. Opera is an
international art form and music an international language. But the
function of each opera house is to modulate that language with a
specific reference to this city, this audience, this year, on this
particular evening. Only then will the public have that sense of
particular ownership which justifies the expenditure of their hard
earned money. This individual sense of artistic policy must not be
compromised and diluted by productions which roam aimlessly from one
city to another, reflecting nothing in particular except financial
convenience. This is airport culture - duty-free opera -
in every sense.
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But the profoundest artistic implication of subsidy
is in the creation of new work, for that is the deepest compliment
which the arts can pay tothe society which supports them. I have
argued for more commercial disciplines in the generation of new
opera. I have argued for a highly idealistic vision of the role of
opera in society. Are these two standpoints necessarily
contradictory? I think not.
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The most brilliant expressions of truth are those
which are so transparent that they seem obvious to everyone. There is
nothing dumb about communication, so I am not talking about dumbing
down. In fact, to be obscure is as dumb as it is to be banal. No
opera house could justify one penny of subsidy by being either. If
opera is to have a role in society and justify its subsidy, it can
only do so by ruthless adherence to the ideal of expressing and
communicating the world of the imagination to the widest possible
cross section of society. The creation of communicative new work is a
vital part of that duty. People have an immense respect and love for
music; but we are beginning to create the perception that so-called
classical music can only relate to human beings of the past. This is
untrue and a horrible distortion. It should be the highest aim of
every opera house in the future to show that music is latent in the
lives and stories of ordinary modern people - that music is not part
of the heritage industry - that its power and emotional depth
relate to our lives, not just to costume dramas of the past - that
its audience has access not just to the music of the past, but to the
music that is within modern life. That is the true way to repay the
debt of subsidy. It is the true way for opera in the future.!
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London W1C 1BA - UK
telephone 020 7491 8110
facsimile 020 7493 7463
email admin@rps-uk.demon.co.uk
http://www.royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk
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