Well, what ARE we fighting for?

If the persistent talk of arts cuts has done anything, it has prompted a running discussion on what the arts and culture actually mean to this country.  It is hardly surprising that among professional politicians, the debate is generally split along political lines but even there, some have crossed the floor to argue that it is not as simple as slashing the budget for the arts and expecting the wider public to quietly acquiesce. The problem is that whenever we discuss budget cuts, we are offered one dimensional "either, or" scenarios; "I would rather money was spent on saving lives" or, from the arts side, "we spend billions on Trident". And so the public are easily manipulated. 

Governments - of any colour - are given to extreme consciousness when it comes to our physical and social health, telling us how to look after ourselves, demanding we stop doing things like smoking, trying to prevent young women from getting pregnant, ordering us to stop using our phones when driving or to get us to reduce our alcohol intake. There is no end of ways by which politicians will apparently concern themselves deeply with our well-being and if they have to, they will fine us into complying. What they do not seem to have a great deal of time for is our emotional, intellectual and cultural health, despite that almost the entire point of our existence as working, harassed and according to them, wantonly unhealthy, members of society is to enjoy life. I don't know about you but culture, in its many forms, is sort of what life is all about isn't it? Reading, watching TV and cinema, listening to music? What is it we do when not at the office? Where do we get our emotional experiences on a day to day basis?

For a country that is so drenched in cultural history, Britain can be a quite monstrously, grotesquely uncultured place, especially when the nastier elements of our 

politically active society demonstrate their viciously hateful antipathy towards the arts (unless it is entirely paid for at the door by the public who experience it). To them, far better to spend money on the really "necessary" things; of course, if not a single penny was ever spent by the public purse on the arts, the same people would no doubt be attacking other groups who receive money from the state for whatever purpose, but I digress. 

I work in an industry that receives a large portion of the ACE budget. I wouldn't necessarily agree that is fair but the problem with this particular argument is that opera is so ridiculously stereotyped and caricatured in the UK that the debate is almost impossible to have without some idiot saying "it is for the rich, let them pay for it!".  I have written before that it is the rich who do often pay for it; ask all those development managers working for opera and theatre companies around the UK who they squeeze until the pips squeak?

But culture is, I am pleased to report, something that large numbers of the British do value. Our problem is that a great swathe of our nation is not terribly well exposed to arts and culture and so, as a consequence of historically half-arsed educationalist thinking, the arts suffer from being perceived as something enjoyed only by a certain class of Londoner for whom the anti-culturalists reserve especially vituperative hostility and so politicians are kidded into thinking they are only upsetting a minority. From the other side, those championing the socially and economically challenged within society look at the same issue with a different slant and often they stand accused - certainly by me - of robbing young people of the opportunity to explore. They tell them "that is not for you". I am as allergic to them as I am the flathead pseudo-economists.

In Kensington and Chelsea, the council carry out regular surveys of a group of people known as the Residents Panel. There are several hundred of these people, carefully selected to reflect the social and economic profile of the borough and the participants are asked to comment on various aspects of council services, to offer opinions on major topics and issues. They recently took part in a survey on culture and their answers were hugely encouraging. 

Asked to agree or otherwise with the statement "Arts and culture in London are an important part of my life", 86% said they Strongly Agreed or Agreed. Only 1% said they disagreed. They continued in that vein for several similar related statements. And then the final section stated, "I believe that arts and culture should be encouraged and supported by the council" - 54% Strongly Agreed, 35% Agreed and only 3% Strongly Disagreed or Disagreed. That is 89% of people who believe their council should support culture. What the survey doesn't offer, naturally, is a caveat that suggests that if the council DOES support the arts, they won't do something else "more important", which is precisely where the flatheads will get exquisitely cross. 

As it happens, the council has made it quite clear that arts and culture in Kensington and Chelsea are not the icing on the cake, but a big part of the cake itself. It was of course delightful to note that 58% of people in the borough visit Opera Holland Park but that is blowing our own trumpet a bit too hard. RBKC supports arts right across the spectrum; it ended up with a successful opera company yet they also support Nour Festival, a fantastic celebration of middle eastern culture, InTransit, Leighton House and Linley Sambourne House and of course Carnival. That is a first class portfolio of municipal arts. Councils up and down the country try to do similar but many also find culture to be the first and easiest thing to relinquish, thus leaving their communities impoverished in more ways than one.

I recently gave two speeches to corporate guests at OHP. Both events were for companies who put in money to support the festival, to try to help progress the work and to contribute to the costs and pay for the thousands of free and cheap tickets we distribute every season. Both speeches turned into something of an eulogy to the vitality and importance of the arts and to the absolutely critical need for them to continue to support culture in the UK through sponsorships and donations. In both rooms, my audience were wealthy, successful people, all of whom could afford to pay for whatever they fancied doing or seeing in a theatre and indeed do so. But each and every one of them nodded vigorously in agreement, applauded the principal of publicly supported arts and the access to it we should afford the whole of society. My guests had put their money where their mouth is because they know, from their own experience, that life is just so much better when infused with wondrous music, bewitching words or gorgeous pictures. 

If RBKC do decide, one day, to end their support of Opera Holland Park, we shall all move on and do something else because, after all we are just officers providing a service the council currently wishes to pay for. It is also worth mentioning that OHP generates an estimated £2 million per season in additional visitor spend and provides hundreds of jobs. But, you see, were WE to be offered a choice between saving the life of an old person or opera, it would be hard to argue it wouldn't it?  But our community - London - will be worse off for us having been given that Hobson's Choice. And it begs the question; what kind of a world do we want all of these healthy, non drinking, non-smoking, very old people to be living in? 

As Churchill allegedly said to his finance minister who was urging him to cut funding for the arts to pay for munitions during WWll, "Well, then what are we fighting for?" I don't even care if the quote is authentic because it's a bloody great sentiment regardless.

For goodness sake, shut up Alfie!

About a year ago I was contacted by a newspaper to ask my opinion on an Alfie Boe interview in which the tenor had bemoaned the snobbery of the opera world and told how it had driven him from the industry. I suspect I was asked because the journalist knew that I am an example of someone who couldn't be further from Boe's caricature. My response was a sigh and a childishly fruity alliteration. I had to do a double take when I read an interview this week in The Telegraph, which said pretty much the same thing again. This time a "class system" had emerged in the world of opera (but Prince Charles is a mate) and Alfie was on tour, not selling a record; rock and roll and some nice neapolitan songs await the knicker-chucking hordes, apparently.

As you might expect, Twitter and Facebook lit up with the anger and indignation of opera professionals exasperated at the dual jeopardy of Boe's boring mantra and the media's lazy accommodation of it. What irks them is easy to fathom; Boe was given a fantastic opportunity to develop a career, he had talent, but now he is fully signed up to the stereotype that maintains the almost ludicrous assertion that opera is a world of Oxbridge snobs who only care about a singer's social provenance. And worse, he does it to sell records or tickets.

To be fair to Boe, there is every likelihood that he is asked these questions unbid and merely answers with a nudge and a wink to his PR, knowing it will get attention. I don't suppose he really gives a fig about the opera business and merely continues to be soaked by whatever self justification he bathed himself in when he got the hell outta opera-dodge.

I don't know Alfie personally but I know plenty who do and not everybody has good things to say about him. But given these people and their backgrounds, I also know that Alfie is aware of how very few people in the business emerge from privileged backgrounds. However, and my moderation continues to favour Alfie, his ire seems to be directed at those in management or the general establishment of the art form. So is he right?

No. Of course he isn't right. In fact, he couldn't be more wrong. If he said the business is liberally dotted with tossers, he would be right. If he said there are some people who acquire careers without the attendant talent (hugely more prevalent in the realm of directing and conducting, I would venture) he would be right. If he said that opera singers, even the most lavishly talented, can be narcissistic pains in the arse, he would be right because he himself has such tendencies. If he made a hundred observations of one sort or another he would probably hit the mark in half of them. But the one thing he is utterly wrong about is a "class system" among singers (beyond 'rubbish', 'good' 'excellent' that is). And whilst audiences for opera can sometimes fit the caricature, even these people concern themselves only with the sound that emits from a singer's mouth; a sound that even in the most shaky Italian masks a northern brogue. They couldn't care less where Alfie grew up and how many oil filters he changed.

One of the most delightful aspects of my job is the relationship it gives me with individuals who would, in all honesty, choose to cross the street from me in other circumstances. That annoys some people but I find it triumphantly satisfying and it shows that the shared passion for the art form transcends social hierarchy in a way that we like to broadcast through our development work. Of course society has a social order and class system but in opera, where talent and the glory of music is paramount, nobody gives a shit. This is even true of houses and festivals where wealth and status are most lavishly displayed in the auditorium.

As far as I can tell, Alfie probably found the discipline and effort required for the operatic repertoire too irksome. He can't be arsed with it, which is not to say he doesn't work hard at what he does now, but he probably feels more at home with the screaming, unbridled adoration of young women and housewives (who wouldn't?!) He needs to shut up because he is protesting too much.

Alfie clearly has no affection for opera and perhaps he had doubts about his potential for the kind of success he craved. He is in a unique position to encourage audiences to explore it because he had a decent shot at it when ENO and the ROH were giving him opportunities. But if he doesn't feel compelled to speak on its behalf, to offer insights that may help the wider public to try it, then he should just say nothing. And he should certainly not abuse and denigrate those who, like him, have ordinary backgrounds. It is crass, rude, and intensely self-regarding. And worse, it shows him up to be the thing that he claims people dislike so much. Ironic, huh?

Just a dream

What I am about to impart to you is absolutely true. I really DID have a dream last night that featured Antonio Pappano and a full audience at the ROH. And I did have a stand up row with the maestro from the floor of the auditorium which migrated onto the stage. 

And it was one of those dreams that, when you awake, takes a few moments to be acknowledged as a figment of your sleeping brain.

It also had a complete narrative, it didn't just appear in the middle of another dream; it began, had a middle, an end and there was nothing either side of it. And given recent debates it was perhaps an entirely predictable dream to experience. It went a lot like this....

The lights dimmed in the house, there was a fanfare and the curtains opened to reveal a large, bright staircase with gaudy bulbs along each step; I half expected Bruce Forsyth to appear at the top of it. But he didn't; amid a bright pink wash, the spotlight picked out Tony Pappano, hands raised, a roar of approval from the crowd, his arms raised in the air triumphantly. A big band played. Alongside Tony was another individual who I didn't recognise and who became insignificant and irrelevant.  Tony marched to the front of the stage with cheers, music and applause ringing in his ears. From my front row seat I noticed that in one hand he held a pad of yellow Post-it notes and in the other a pencil. He was wearing a green velvet jacket.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen!"

A roar in return.

"Tonight I am here, on stage to talk to you about opera. More importantly I am here to get ideas from YOU about what we do to make it more popular!"

More cheers, more applause (I promise, this is exactly how it went. The dream is emblazoned on my memory).

"Every idea you give me I will write on these stickers and they will be placed on the wall in my office. You will shout the ideas, I will write them down. It is that simple".

By now I was already bristling so I didn't wait for him to finish. I stood up.

"Tony, is this bloody serious?" I barked.

Tony noticed me and, leaning forward from the stage, offered calming hand and a fixed smile.

"We all know what you think Michael", he said "but lets give other people a chance to speak."

"What is your top price ticket Tony? Come on, what is it?"

The house had fallen deathly silent but I looked around at them anyway, seeking approval for the question. There was none.

"It isn't just about price is it?" he replied. Tony was still smiling, looking a little sheepish. He looked alarmed when I strode up the indecently handy set of steps in front of me (this was a dream after all). 

"Come on Mike".

"Don't worry Tony, I just want to speak to you. I won't punch you. No it isn't just price. What about repertoire?" 

Things started to get a little surreal here. I told him that he should be doing more Mozart and asked why he had never done Cilea's  L'arlesiana or Giordano's Siberia

"You are not welcoming to people here," I continued.  "You stop people at the door who don't look posh. You don't even give them a refund when you turn them away". 

My grandstanding raised not even a murmur from the house.

"That's not true. We do give them a refund!" he replied.

Tony was still smiling and I complimented him on it. He laughed.

"And what about you slagging off all the singers for being ill? How is that making opera more accessible?"  Dreams often conflate issues. Wrongly.

Tony dropped the smile at this point. I wouldn't say he looked angry but his face was stern. 

"Ha! That's why we are doing this tonight! Bloody singers dropped out and we had to get something on stage!" Huge cheer from the house.

I scoffed at him. "No it isn't!"

"Yes it is! Three of them. All together. And they phoned me from the pub!" 

Huge boo from the house. He was smiling again. 

"You haven't written a single thing down on your stickers Tony. You call that consultation? Not a single word have you scribbled down".

And then the music started again and we both walked off together, up the staircase, through a curtain at the top. When there, he thanked me.

"Great show!" he said. Still smiling. 

James, my producer colleague, was waiting. 

"You tart"' he said.

Sick Singers

Antonio Papanno unleashed a tsunami of frowning and growling when he bemoaned the "weakness" of modern singers recently. Many observers cheered him too; if you pay a couple of hundred quid and the star doesn't turn up it is no surprise that you would give Tony a clap. Oddly, on such occasions when the lonely walk to centre-stage by a member of the management, just before curtain up, signals something is wrong, there is often a chance that you will be party to a significant career moment as the cover steps up to the plate and steals the show.

As expected, the debate has become polarised; a good old ding dong on the Guardian website between Christopher Gillet and Peter Conrad is a perfect demonstration of how the issue divides people. The truth, as ever, is in the middle somewhere. In 24 years, I have seen both the capricious, neurotic narcissist panicking after a sneeze as well as - the more frequent - stoical, risk taking heroics of sopranos with broken feet, tenors with suppurating, inflamed throats and others with recently delivered and grave news swirling through their minds. Those to whom Pappano refers probably fell into some or all of the above categories but he has had some very public and profoundly awkward experiences recently and his frustration is understandable.

What is absolutely certain is that opera houses have a responsibility to their employees and in the vast majority of cases, we have absolutely no concerns that a singer is swinging the lead, aware as we are of the intricacies of the problem, the gravity of their condition. And we also understand the extent of their exposure when out on that stage, performing the most physically, mentally and emotionally demanding of all performance art. No disappointed audience member, for all our regret, is worth risking the health of a singer.

The real problem with Pappano's comments is not necessarily that he made them but the reaction to them by people who ought to know better. Accusations of blame fly hither and thither; it is the agents who make them sing roles they are unready for; it is the PR machine who forces them to endure unnecessary engagements when they should be resting; they are divas with pseudo-messianic complexes and so on. All of that may be a bit true, but it is yet another stereotype, propagated by the industry itself, that allows the public and anybody with malice aforethought to lazily trumpet "I told you so". Whip out the brush and slop on the tar.

I can't tell you how intensely dislikable some singers can be, but even then, there is - must be - an appreciation for what it is they do every night; it is also true to say that our critical fraternity can instil a fear that ads just enough of an added incentive not to go out there and risk a caning. But it isn't the critics' fault either. It is just simply that in 99% of cases, the singer is sick. If you or I get a cold we can sit at our desks, doped on Lemsip and trundle through our day's tasks unwatched, unnoticed, silently. That is a luxury not afforded a performer who must force their voice into spectacularly unnatural contortions, expending monumental amounts of energy in the process. We might expect them to gamely sing through it as many often do, but sometimes, they simply can't. If the weakness to which Pappano refers is perceived to be this refusal to battle on, then people have misunderstood him, because I cannot imagine he would want to risk the quality of a performance or the career of a singer. And a very real risk it is too. We still blanche at the memory of a tenor who chose not to make us aware of a throat condition but who nevertheless went on in one of the repertoire's most ferociously demanding roles. The shock and horror of watching the cataclysmic progress of his demise through the evening remains with us still. And he was destroyed by it.

The insistence that "star" performers should always fill the glamour roles should also become less habitual, with houses giving, instead, more opportunities to the talented performers that rarely get the chance. If Pappano's remarks are indicative of a general concern among international houses, then perhaps it is an opportunity to start changing the way they cast productions, relying less on the glamour and more on the talent, spreading the load, nourishing the future of the art, neutering the rampant expectations.

In search of Jewels

Of the regular questions we are asked about our repertoire of late Italian operas, the most common is  "where on earth do you find them?" Having been presenting these works for so long we often find ourselves unable to answer since it is hard to remember where a piece first came onto our radar; L'amore dei tre Re famously took ten years from first being discussed to finally getting a production. The truth is that in reality, whilst these operas now lay abandoned and forgotten (many argue for good reason) this wasn't always the case and once you begin to ferret around in the text books and internet resources, they become a part of a wider picture that begins to feels perfectly normal. I gioielli della Madonna by Ermano Wolf-Ferrari (who is more famous for his comedies and in particular I segreto di Susanna) enjoyed a kind of butterfly-brief stardom that many operas in the early 20th century shared.  They would be launched onto the public, flourish for a while, sometimes become staples of the repertoire and then vanish again. L'amore dei tre Re was a significant hit in America, being performed regularly for nearly forty years until the composer died, the opera's popularity perishing with him.

Controversy marked gioielli out; love between a brother and his adopted sister, implied attacks on the Catholic church, gangsterism, overheating passions, suicide and, horror of horrors, the pilfering of sacred adornments in the pursuit of lust.  What these operas of the veristic tradition did was take the core tenets of human nature and amplified them in often hysterical, febrile caricature, as unreserved and demonstrative as the simple, peasant folk they depicted. In their way they were breaking ground in their desire to offer uncensored, raw depictions of how badly we can behave when our loins are stirred but they wrapped it all up in a diverting and palliative sheath of beautiful music. Of course, today, none of it is even faintly controversial but at the time, some of these operas burned like acid through society. Gioielli itself was not performed in Italy until a whole 42 years after its German premier in 1911 (Wolf-Ferrari had a German publisher and his works were often premiered there) but when you consider that fifties Italy was still a fairly zipped up place one can deduce that the opera isn't quite the fire and brimstone sacrilege it was at first made out to be.  Even the Proms seemed in love with it, or more specifically, Henry Wood, with the preludes to acts two and three being given in 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1917, 1922 and then not again until 1950 which was the last time the BBC went anywhere near it. In 2002, University College Opera produced it in a full version.

Wolf-Ferrari and other composers faced the almost inescapable problem of living in the shadow of Puccini and to some extent Mascagni and it is no coincidence that we have programmed the most famous duo in the verismo repertoire to open the 2013 season. If Cav & Pag was the birth  of verismo, gioielli represents the place to which the composers who followed took the genre, injecting German and French influence and a contemporaneous perception of greater daring and grit. As we know, what composers like Wolf-Ferrari, Giordano, Cilea, Zandonai et al hoped would be a new spring turned out to be a brief flowering. There is some irony that Leoncavallo, composer of Pagliacci is famed for that work and little else although he did compose good operas thereafter, including a La boheme that had the rug pulled from under it by Puccini. And whilst Mascagni's light began to burn more brightly alongside that of his fellow Tuscan, he was never fully satisfied with the public and critical perception of him, forever seeking new ways to articulate his music.

Musically, however,  gioielli  does indeed pay healthy homage to Mascagni but is more ambitious in its scope and certainly seems to be deliberately conceived to provide opera houses with an epic migraine in producing terms. It is huge. Indeed one could probably find reason to accuse the composer of pomposity (the score calls for 12 mandolins for starters) but it is also easy to believe that Wolf-Ferrari merely felt he wanted to create a mammoth piece of socio-realist spectacle that would take the breath from its audience by using scale and monumental orchestration; in our post-Olympic ceremony mega-theatre world we are in no position to criticise.  Neapolitan street scenes peopled by a chorus we will comfortably hail as our largest ever deliver deliciously authentic music that calls upon tarantella traditions. They are accompanied by an orchestra (also the largest ever at OHP) which punctuate the acts with four suites of bewildering variety, one of which outdoes Mascagni's Cavalleria intermezzo for pained, weeping gorgeousness. The opera even includes a duet between mother and son as he pours his heart out, echoing Cilea's L'arlesiana but with the added frisson of it being about his adopted sister (one wonders if the excision of blood ties was a last minute example of self censorship by the composer). And as with Pagliacci, the opera promotes itself on the claim that the story emerged from true events.  

A reality that all opera houses face is that audiences tend to gravitate towards the works they know. In fact, this isn't a problem only experienced by opera houses but there is a peculiar perception afoot that by presenting these works we are, by definition, asking audiences to consider them all to be masterpieces and as such they are frequently judged on that basis. The definition of a masterpiece varies from person to person and gioielli probably isn't one, but it is bloody good and a fantastic night at the theatre. Central among our reasons for presenting these works is that for all of their flaws (flaws, I should add, that are relative to our notions of perfection) they frequently contain moments of shimmering beauty that compare to -  or even surpass - anything in the repertoire. 

For sixteen years, OHP audiences have gathered in their thousands to hear and experience these curiosities and so we have little reason to complain about a reluctance to explore among our patrons. It is also true to say that any season without one is challenged by our supporters which is encouragement enough for us to continue resurrecting them.