The Money of Power

WHENEVER I LAMENT the lack of cultural awareness across the U.S., I point to the support given to the arts in Europe, where it’s generally understood that opera and dance, theater and classical music will never draw enough paying customers to provide a livelihood to anyone who professionally sings or dances or otherwise writes or performs. Every nation needs its cultural identity to be buttressed by the fine arts, as they’re (unfortunately) snootily known, and smart government entities come up with money in support.

Sir Simon Rattle

If, in the U.S., it splits across party lines, that’s no surprise. Cultural literacy goes hand-in-hand with education, and education encourages liberal thinking. That’s why so many conservatives weaponize their lack of smarts and attack the institutions and traditions of education. Thus the book-bannings, the arts-money cuts, the general hostility toward universities. When Republicans seize enough power in Washington, DC, these days, one of their first targets is the National Endowment for the Arts, whose already minuscule budget is dwarfed by such precious commodities as defense spending. But Republicans are fighting for their own survival. The smarter you are, they understand on some smart-ass level, the more likely it is you’ll vote for someone else.

And now the U.K. has been hit. Under Boris Johnson, himself an administrative disaster, a Conservative MP named Nadine Dorries was installed as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Proving her mettle as disaster-in-waiting, last year she helped engineer £50 million in cuts to London-area arts organizations through Arts Council England (ACE). The £12.8 million that the English National Opera was expecting, for example, went to zero. The company was urged to move out of London instead. The excuse given for the draconian cuts is that the arts need to decentralize, that London gets too much money – and that’s not an unsound argument. But you don’t modify such things with a guillotine. What’s needed is not cuts to the arts in London but more money given to organizations throughout the rest of the country.

Those in power, however, not only are ignorant about the arts – hey, Nadine, how does Beethoven’s Seventh begin? – but also don’t understand what makes up an artistic entity’s community – those not directly employed by a company but who rely on the company for income. And then there’s the fact that many, if not most, of those directly involved – the performers, the designers, the composers, the painters, you name it – put down roots that need to be respected. The English National Opera was supposed to consider moving to Manchester, for which it would then receive £17m over three years.

Playing what’s now a typical game of follow-the-conservative-leader, the BBC decided to slash salaries at three of its orchestras – the BBC Philharmonic, BBC Concert Orchestra, and BBC Symphony – and completely eliminate the BBC Singers.

It’s probably difficult for the American classical-music community to appreciate just how important choral music is to the British concert scene, because American schoolkids don’t have access to anything like the music education that perseveres, even if it’s hanging by its fingernails, in UK schools. And American schoolkids grow up with no knowledge of any music beyond what corporate-music zillionaires want them to hear.

The Glyndebourne Festival, which is England’s most prestigious opera presenter, enjoys a handsome amount of private support, which is why it can strongly suggest that gentlemen arrive tuxedo-clad – but this is also an entity with a keen educational agenda, taking opera productions, workshops, chamber-music concerts and much more to hundreds of children throughout their country. The touring costs already were heavily subsidized by the company, but with its ACE award cut in half to £800,000, and costs continuing to rise, the tours have been canceled.

So this ham-handed attempt at decentralization will result instead in a general cultural starvation.

There has been outrage, of course, even if arts-related fulminations don’t typically merit front-page coverage. One of the most stirring rebuttals came from Sir Simon Rattle, a much-beloved conductor already bruised by the lunacy of Brexit. He made a speech at a London Symphony Orchestra concert in April, which I excerpt below:

“It's clear we are facing a long-term fight for existence and we cannot just quietly acquiesce to the dismantling or dismembering of so many important companies. ... But none of this is a force majeure. It is rooted in political choices. ... And as other political decisions affect music in schools and then music colleges, the vital organic pipeline that feeds our music will start to run dry.

“But there's a kind of dishonesty at the heart of many of the decisions. George Orwell will recognize the language: ‘Refresh the administration’ and ‘reimagine the art form.’ They are two bits of ‘newspeak’ which mean the opposite of the actual words, but you can all choose your own personal idiocies.

“If you actually want opera to be experienced in more parts of the country, it is ludicrous to cut the grants of the companies who do exactly that. This should not need explaining. ... And by the way, without an orchestra or chorus you no longer have an opera company - these are not things that can just be reassembled later, or bought in from Ikea.

“So many of the problems are rooted in a political ignorance of what this art form entails, and more worryingly, there seems to be a stubborn pride in the ignorance.”

The speech had some positive effect. Shortly afterward, ACE revised its proposed budget for the English National Opera that will allow it to continue at its London base, without abandoning its obsession with moving the company north by 2029 – an area already served by Opera North.
 
Arts Council England has now backtracked on the plans that were condemned by the classical music community, instead promising English National Opera (ENO) the same funding it would have received prior to the controversial cuts, and delaying any move outside London until 2029.

And if you’re seeking some Newspeak, let’s listen to ACE chairman Sir Nicholas Serota, who said: “The extended timeline for their transition to a new main base will enable the ENO to undertake this complex move and to develop partnerships in the new city. The Arts Council’s support for opera is unwavering.”

Which still leaves the Welsh National Opera, the Royal Opera House, and Glyndebourne, among others, gasping for financial breath.  

Stephen Langridge, Glyndebourne’s artistic director, reflected that the current season, as planned,
“would have seen hundreds of children singing with the Glyndebourne Chorus, workshops in care homes and chamber music recitals in universities. Sadly, this autumn we will not be able to offer these extraordinary opera experiences so widely across England.”

We’ve been dealing with parallel problems stateside for many decades. When former B-movie actor Ronald Reagan was placed into the White House, he immediately tried to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, believing (in the words of his chief hatchet-man, David Stockman, that “(it) went too far, and ... would be easy to defeat.” Smarter people prevailed and preserved the organization, but it continues to be an ideological target for those with political power and limited intelligence. In 1995, for instance, house speaker Newt Gingrich insisted that the NEA be eliminated, and he threw in the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as well. All of them survived, but it’s an ongoing struggle.

There’s something perversely satisfying about seeing the arts perceived by the high-income lowbrows as a threat. It means the arts are working. It means the books they’re trying to ban are speaking to those who will be inspired by them. It means that even the most outrageous of performance-arts installations will expand the thinking of those looking to do what the arts are supposed to do: reinterpret who we are in fresh, unexpected perspectives. And it means that we’ll continue to be informed by the passions of that most passionate of the arts, the opera. That’s me you’ll see in a “La traviata” seat, weeping the tears I’m too self-conscious to shed at home.