Levelling up is a worthy aim. But stealing arts cash from London is cultural vandalism
Melvyn Bragg
Sure, sure, those regional proles should have more but don’t remove anything from urban grandees like me!
Bragg having forgotten the first assumption of economics, that we live in a world of scarce resources.
Isn’t his success largely based on him being a professional Cumbrian? Lake Poets, house in Wigton, supports Carlisle footie,maintains his adenoidal accent, etc.
Stop all the support for the regions now he’s too old to enjoy travelling up there. “The provincial prole can kiss my hole, my Hampstead bath’s not full of coal”.
Which university do you think Bragg attended?
Sorry, points will not be awarded
Those wankers live on stolen money.
Stealing? Call the police.
Oh, he means they’re sending the state’s ‘protection fees’ to different clients. Politicians and the mob are fickle; he should have chosen a more honest source of funds; I’ve heard great things about a system where people pay voluntarily.
“There are several examples, but I am writing here about one specific case – the English National Opera. The London Coliseum is a magnificent building, which is very difficult to run successfully, but by any standards a keystone in London’s fair claim to be one of the two foremost cultural cities on the planet.”
In truth opera is a preserved art form. There are still operas written today, but they are overwhelmingly wanky. Something about racism or sexism or Palestine. Bad Orange Man: The Opera is probably being written now. No-one goes. To get something that was culturally significant at any level, anywhere, you have to go back to Janacek in 1924 or Puccini who died around the same time.
And the ENO just don’t get much of a crowd. People who like opera generally don’t like the words being mangled into English.
I frequently yell my hatred of the ENO from the rooftops. It should get out of its permanent home and go on tour like the other regional companies. My problem is not so much it being in English ( although with modern technology it is unnecessary ) it is just that the productions are crap.
There is too much competition in London from the other theatres. This doesn’t happen elsewhere so much. Munich has two permanent houses, Berlin three ( I think ), Vienna three . But these places although they have qualitatively good straight theatres, don’t have the sheer bulk like London does.
Opera in the regions tend either to be festival based or share a large state run regional theatre with other forms of production.
We get the occcasional opera down my way from Glyndebourne or English Touring and they are always sold out, so there is a market.
Yes, ok acoustics maybe a thing, but i went to the Glyndebourne on tour in the local theatre which was pretty good. They don’t need a house for people to appreciate the music, They need a house to be an elite. And yes elites fill your boots have your grand houses in central london for your cultural see and be seen events but please don’t do it with someone else’s dosh.
“There are still operas written today,”
Sure. It’s what many music videos are. And they are no different from classical opera. They’re serving exactly the same purpose.
“maintains his adenoidal accent”: I must have spent hundreds of hours in Carlisle and I never heard an accent like Melv’s.
Stealing cash from the back pockets of tax-payers to pay for art anywhere is theft.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media, Arts & Sport and all bodies which depend on it should be closed.
Isn’t Opera just Musical Theatre by another name?
Last opera I saw was on the tellybox. Wonderful imagery as Elmer carries Bugs up to heaven.
If someone said to Bragg that the money had been stolen from us by the government in the first place he’d dismiss them as right wing libertarian nutjobs or something similar. The lack of self-awareness is breath-taking.
And they wonder whey we get rebellions like Brexit, Trump and quite likely a new Farage/Tice party that will decimate the Tory Red Wall and whatever is left of Labour’s working class vote.
“There are still operas written today,”
Sure. It’s what many music videos are. And they are no different from classical opera. They’re serving exactly the same purpose.
They don’t tend to last 6 hours, though:
“Parsifal is the kind of opera that starts at six o’clock. After it has been going three hours, you look at your watch and it says 6:20.”
David Randolph (1914-2010)
Last opera I saw was on the tellybox. Wonderful imagery as Elmer carries Bugs up to heaven.
So what do you expect from an opera ? A happy end ?
It is all musical theatre. The Singspiel was a form of musical ( eg Magic Flute, Der SchauspielDirektor, Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail ), Carmen is a musical really, although it has terrible dialogue. Operetta is another type of musical which usually has pretty comic dialogue and are often more like Carry Ons and of course there is G and S.
“Carmen is a musical really, although it has terrible dialogue.”
But the music is sublime.
Can’t disagree there snag, old bean.
Ottokring said:
“Operetta is another type of musical which usually has pretty comic dialogue and are often more like Carry Ons”
There was a discussion on Radio 3 only yesterday about which Carry On movie would make the best opera.
(“At Your Convenience”, they decided, but I haven’t seen that)
Melvyn Bragg’s No 1 item in favour of ENO is that it has the most diverse chorus andorchestra in the country – he cartefully omits any comment on the quality of said chorus and orchestra!
So what are we being asked to subsidise? Artistic quality? NO: an experiment in “diversity” – allocating jobs to people on the grounds that they are not white middle-class males. Unfortunately, apart from a few geniuses who will choose solo careers in preference to the chorus and orchestra, the overwhelming majority of ENO-quality musicians will be drawn from those who were musically talented middle-class children and given years of disciplined teaching and training. It’s not just the money (that is important but it can sometimes be provided by a patron) but the (self-)discipline that is the norm in middle-class homes is essential. So the drive for “diversity” rather than just quality reduces the latter.
Every Disney movie is Opera. I watched Encanto recently with the kids: calling the characters are two-dimensional is erring on the generous side, the plot is gappy and inconsistent, and the ending is both trite and unsatisfying. But that doesn’t matter because those things exist purely as a rather wonky frame to hang the songs on and the songs — and the graphics — are excellent. And that is what opera should be: great music, flamboyant visuals. Plus you can get the DVD for under a tenner.