It set the twittersphere alight – or at least that tiny corner of it concerned with the arts. Will Gompertz proposed on Tuesday’s Today programme that subsidising the arts doesn’t work because only 8 per cent of people in this country go to opera, ballet and classical concerts, and because they’re all sewn-up inside imposing London buildings. All nice and easy – a provocative headline and a stinging statistic in one fell swoop. But the truth is a little more complicated than that – and marginally more positive, too.
Two points to begin. If Gompertz’s interview subject speaking for London youth Fady Elsayed has “never seen one advert” for theatre or opera in the city, he either doesn’t use public transport or he should have gone to Specsavers. Adverts from Covent Garden, English National Opera, the Barbican et al might have varying degrees of communicative nous, but they exist –they’re commonplace and they’re big.
Secondly, the figures are skewed. Far more than 8 per cent of people in this country experience live opera, ballet and classical music. Many experience the arts as “a living element…[in] their upbringing” as John Maynard Keynes said they should when he founded the Arts Council. But their details don’t show up on box office receipts because they’re given free tickets or they are single, anonymous elements in large group bookings made by schools and colleges. After school, thousands of higher education students from varied backgrounds attend orchestral concerts; they’re contacted, welcomed, encouraged, talked-to and offered discounted tickets by marketing staff working for state-subsidised orchestras.
Theatre companies, opera companies and orchestras in this country present numerous performances for schools, families and community groups, some of them for free. That was consolidated in 2007 when the non-BBC symphony orchestras in the UK collectively promised to offer every schoolchild the chance to hear a live performance. However that bold promise is shaping up – it’s been dented but not extinguished by the most recent round of funding cuts – the very fact it was made underlines the single and most salient difference between subsidised and commercial art.
It’s interesting that Gompertz and Elsayed homed-in on buildings and the creatures who inhabit them as being the main sources of intimidation for people attending opera – I agree with the latter element wholeheartedly, as I’ve argued before. But it’s hard to play the architecture card when you consider that there are only three purpose-built opera houses in the United Kingdom operating as such, and one of them receives no subsidy.
I spent the last week in Plymouth, watching operas and plays at the Theatre Royal where the concurrent visit from Glyndebourne On Tour and Flemish theatre collective Ontroerend Goed came between Marti Pellow in Blood Brothers and Christopher Biggins in the Christmas pantomime. The latter shows sold/will sell well; nobody can argue about architecture putting people off there. It’s not that the building isn’t beautiful – it is, and it’s about to get even more so (and more welcoming) thanks to an Arts Council redevelopment grant. You might say it’s intimidating in its creative peacefulness, but that doesn’t stop people coming through the door to musicals, pantomime and comedy.
Opera North, English Touring Opera, Welsh National Opera and Glyndebourne spend much of the year travelling to theatres (not opera houses) like these to deliver first-class performances of great works old and new. The Glyndebourne offerings are sometimes even more focused and slick than they are at the summer festival. Top-price tickets are only marginally more expensive than those for the blockbuster shows, but government subsidy means there are hundreds of seats available for less than twenty quid.
And who’s sat in them? On Thursday night’s Le nozze di Figaro in Plymouth there were dozens of schoolchildren, plenty of pensioners and a good deal who would fall in between – a far more diverse audience than your average pop gig attracts. We’d all like to see a broader cross section of our society watching plays, operas and concerts, and we’re making progress on that front. But I’m a Plymothian, and I felt as though my home city was probably better represented in those performances at the Theatre Royal than my “residing” city (London) is at Covent Garden. On Friday afternoon in Plymouth, the company performed Rusalka for an audience of schoolchildren and families.
Without arts subsidy Glyndebourne wouldn’t even have been in Plymouth. The schoolchildren – who mostly sat interested and surprised by Glyndebourne’s relevant, vivid and beautifully played Figaro – would probably have been engaging in something a good deal less wonderful and mind-expanding. That means nobody to develop an interest in the art form, grow up, earn a living, become a ticket-buyer and help increase that percentage figure Gompertz was touting. Which in turn means further exclusion, further intimidation and considerable embarrassment in the face of our European counterparts who are proving that increased subsidy of the arts aids society and contributes to the exchequer.
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