Arts Council backs community Traviata over world-beating Wales
OperaAmong the latest infantilisms dribbling out of ACE (Arts Cancel England) is an exciting grant to Barefoot Opera of East Sussex to put on a 12-night tour of Verdi’s La Traviata.
Barefoot, a grassroots enterprise founded by Jenny Miller, is based on a concept of ‘community engagement’ which usually means a strong component of volunteer activity. Without detracting in any way from its worthiness, the money received by Barefoot has been taken from the pot formerly allocated to English and Welsh national operas, both of which are being reduced to a ghostly existence.
A spokesperson for Barefoot said: ‘Since last year’s trailblazing summer tour across London and the south-east, the small BAREFOOT OPERA team has been more active than ever, with several sold-out fund-raising events and new initiatives including a Teacher’s Forum that brings together singing teachers from different musical backgrounds. With new trustees and collaborators coming into the fold and further plans for touring Red! – a children’s opera based on the story of Red Riding Hood – the company goes from strength to strength.’
But that is ‘real democracy’ – skimming the thing that is better to support the lesser. Bringing-down high achievement to bolster the simpletons. Not judging content but celebrating the wrapping paper, because judging content requires elitist exclusive expertise which shuts so many people out.
Strangely enough, with surgeoncy, dentistry, and the law, people demand expertise – democracy doesn’t count there, these are utterly elitist fields. But the arts are mere hobbies for the happy few, so: keep them down.
So your recipe is – don’t encourage start-ups, don’t encourage amateur groups, don’t invest in educating the ‘simpletons’ (how infinitely more intelligent and better-educated you are, indeed!), don’t let anybody think (heaven forbid) that music should be a community activity. Doesn’t it enter your head that investing in grass-roots ventures will create the interest among ordinary folk in classical music that is the only way to ensure its continuing healthy existence?
Deciding how best to allocate funds nationally from a limited pot so as to encourage the arts at all levels is perhaps a little more complicated than you like to think.
That is not the point at all. Music life is like a pyramid, resting on a broad field of activities, where quality can rise to the higher levels. You cannot sacrifice the higher achievements to feed the humus upon which achievement grows, it is one big package. The smaller numbers of music institutions which have developed to the top, need to be kept alive as a place where teh art form can florish, and as an inspiration and a symbol of what is possible. To only see the bottom is populism.
I agree that subsidising the arts at all levels is something that governments should do. Certainly it is one big package. Some of us are capable of seeing both top and bottom of a situation, and recognizing that it is a matter of balance.
As far as I could find out, in 2022-23 Barefoot Opera received £15,400 in grants from ACE.
Welsh National Opera is facing cuts of 2.5 million, around 25% of its annual budget.
How much difference would defunding Barefoot Opera in favour of WNO really make?
I should perhaps point out that the WNO started as a ‘grassroots’ movement in 1943. No doubt you would have sneered at it then. If you don’t look after the soil, nothing good will ever grow.
Careful reading would reveal that I obviously meant that the whole of the pyramid should be looked after.
BUT if you build a glorious garden then fail to tend to it… 2.5 million is a sad lack of care tp the WNO!
Maybe some of those opera-volunteer “simpletons” are neurosurgeons, dentists, lawyers, etc. It’s all more complicated.
Perhaps a better way to talk about funding is “those whose livelihood is in the arts” vs. those making their income elsewhere but volunteering to do arts. Then build the case that sustainable support for the professionals is needed to have an ongoing culture. Professionals are the examples and they teach others how to participate at their level of ability…
The argument that you make can easily be written off as the kind of snobbery that needs to be jettisoned from our culture as quickly as possible.
See my 2nd comment above. There is nothing against amateurs.
But without elitism as a role model, and the publicity that comes with it, you won’t find many people who have had enough exposure to this art form to experience it as a community hobby. Those people who are active in these communities tend to be paying out of their own pocket, willingly, like any other non professional activity. Many of them are in extremely well paid professions. On the whole, musicians and singers are not well paid, if they can find jobs at all. Why are we taking funding from world class arts, destroying professionalism, taking money out of the actual industry, and giving it to people who can (and do) happily pay for it themselves in their spare time (which is fantastic)? They have been inspired by what they have seen at a higher level. No higher level means no inspiration, and eventually those communities will also cease to exist.
Art on a least cost basis means no art. That is a fact.
It’s taken longer than I thought but classical music is slowly finding out how toxic this ideology is.
The biggest irony is that it has done it to itself. The musicians suffer unemployment whilst the progressive suits who faciltate this mess will shuffle off quietly anywhere that will tolerate them.
So, Arts Council England are subsidising amateurs?
They really don’t like professionals and regard them as hobbyists.
The Arts Council’s hitherto has been in general against giving any money to amateur groups – one has always had to show that people are being paid a fair wage. No longer – ACE forcing redundancies in professional companies and transferring to startups. Active destruction of the business
This is a mentality typical of earth-bound, materialistic cultures, and the UK is not alone: the Netherlands are so much better at philistinism, where a large government budget per year is spent on new art and new music that has no roots in the reality of either music life or the world of visual arts.
Barefoot Opera is not run by amateurs. They are all professionals. Read their website.
No they are not. Employing a handful of young singers in addition to a community core isn’t a great deal different from most choral societies. It’s fantastic that it exists, though it’s fair to say there used to be companies like this all over the UK, mostly now gone. There also used to a myriad of fully professional companies employing people: Carl Rosa, Pavilion Opera, Travelling Opera etc, to name but a few. All these have gone. They received little or no funding at all from the Arts Council. Now the council review wants to reduce the really big ones (“funds must be repurposed…”). More out of work singers and musicians while the music colleges are encouraged to pump out more graduates. And why? Because taxpayers money must now focus on communities (i.e. enthusiasts). I know, let’s spend rail industry infrastructure money on heritage railways! Local community arts funding needs to be built on and improved with better local resources (I know there isn’t any, so let’s campaign for that!). It looks very much as though the funding for Barefoot is a political statement, not an endorsement for opera as a whole.
The state of culture in Britain (and beyond) is eerily similar to that of USSR: think proletarian operas for the masses that were required of composers in order to allow them to write real music. Except there people actually wanted the high culture, and didn’t just buy everything the Party tried to sell them. It’s funny, really.
I’m all for bashing ACE for what they’re doing but this post still has a whiff of snootiness aimed at Barefoot Opera which is sad
Good. Serves them right.
I’m not so sure that it’s helpful to talk about “snootiness”. It invites other lazy arguments (I might argue that depriving Wales , the North West and other less fortunate regions of professional opera in favour of funding amateur projects in the South east is at least equally bad).
Really , we ought to insist upon funding for the best and demand more funding elsewhere from this horrific Government.
I’m not saving up for months to see a cobbled together thingie. I want to see a top company. Just as I am happy to support local amateur plays but once a year I want to go to Stratford so I can relax knowing I have a couple of hours of undiluted delight by skilled people.
There’s nothing to stop you saving up for an outing to Glyndebourne or Covent Garden. But how do you know that the people of Barefoot Opera are not skilled? How do you know that they put on “cobbled together thingies” rather than carefully prepared performances? How do you know you would not be missing undiluted delight if you attended one of their events? They are not amateurs or volunteers. The SD story is seriously misleading.
Arts Council ? Must be in Rwanda try there
Next year Barefoot begin their no-frills Ring cycle, in a school lunchroom near you.
It’ll be a curtain ring.
Hahahahaha , That’s the point. Unless highly trained singers amateurs cannot sing La Traviata to make it worth hearing . New comers to opera are inspired by great singers .
Again, the soloists will not be amateurs. Look at their website.
I took the trouble to look at the Barefoot Opera website. I wonder if the researcher for SD did? It appears to be far from relying on “a strong component of volunteer activity”.
I looked at it too. Apparently they will perform to a “band.” (More user-friendly word than “orchestra” or a description of the few musicians who will provide?).
Lots of trustees with different professions but all of whom love music.
And a lot of jargon about “rethinking” and “deconstructing.” I was particularly curious about their Traviata, a “classic opera with our twist.”
This declaration sums it up: “We produce high-quality, inclusive and accessible performances of opera, re-working the classics, commissioning contemporary work, and engaging new audiences and participants.”
This is a professional group, with a particular mission. I would imagine they normally perform with a piano transcription plus one or two accompanying instruments. They are calling it a ‘band’ because it is not an orchestra! Duh!
They are not performing in large theatres or concert halls. For the Traviata, it will be piano, clarinet, double bass, and accordion, played by professionals. The soloists, directors, voice trainers, etc. are professionals, they will be joined by school choirs and choral societies, local to each venue.
The trustees have a different role to play, as in all professional companies, assisting with management and fund raising and other administrative concerns.
I don’t know if you disapprove of their declaration, or mission statement, read in full. I think it is quite admirable. “Rethink and deconstruct: strip opera down to the basics of body, breath, movement, sound.” What is wrong with that? Isn’t that where new productions of any opera should start?
They sum up: “OUR VISION Is to bring about ‘A Town That Sings’, utilising the power of music to inspire, empower and connect.” Is that a bad thing?
I don’t think that it’s a worthwhile exercise to pit musicians (either professional or amateur – society needs both) against each other like this. There’s more merit in working together, lifting one another up. Remember ACE and ACW have both had funding cuts from the tory UK Govt, who are the real threat to the arts, not the Arts Councils. (ACW indirectly from UK Gov through Welsh Govt, which has had its own Arts funding cut, hence the ACW cut)
The Telegraph’s chief opera critic, Nicholas Kenyon, has just issued a diatribe on the philistinism of ACE, particularly as regards Welsh National Opera, in the paper’s cultural newsletter. Not sure if it will appear in the actual online paper, but he rages against the anti-opera bias in ACE. Unfortunately I suspect he is preaching to the choir, as it were.
Eventually so well-funded by ACE it will be renamed Louboutin Opera.
The Arts Council can give money to amateurs when professional opera is in desperate need of finance. La Traviata sounds grand and ambitious, but it is not an opera in which amateurs can sing the lead roles , Violetta is a very highly trained coloratura soprano . An opera like this sung badly is abysmal.
They aren’t amateurs. Look at the Barefoot Opera website, do not take SD at face value. They have an experienced professional coloratura soprano in their core team, and, among their creative associates, a young coloratura soprano with an impressive CV, recently appointed Professor in the Opera department of the London Performing Academy of Music.
Most comments here – and indeed the article itself – are based on a wrong premise. The cast is entirely made up of high-level professionals, with the community involvement *in addition* to this core team. A little research reveals this. So ACE are distributing funding from professional musicians to allocate to… professional musicians. Not such a headline but more true, as is so often the case.
Taking funding from professionals and giving it to professionals? Really? The choruses in national companies are highly skilled and experienced professionals (who often take roles and understudy) and frequently have mortgages, families relying on them etc.You are literally putting their livelihoods at risk by defunding them. Is that true of Barefoot Opera chorus? Maybe you think there’s no difference. You’ve clearly no idea the pressure these artists are currently under.
The work being done by organisation such as Barefoot Opera and others working with amateur musicians and singers is an important and valued part of our overall cultural life – without music in the community, there will be no new generations of musicians or audiences. However its contribution is of a different nature to an infrastructure of professional opera companies. One does not make sense without the other, and the Arts Council does not seem to understand this.
Last year’s production of La Cenerentola by Barefoot Opera was one of the most enjoyable opera productions I have ever seen, and those who saw it also at the Arcola Theatre said the same thing. The singers and the musicians are professionals, and it needs to be stressed that this is a professional production not by a bunch of ‘simpletons’ (what a disparaging phrase! Have you met the producer Jenny Miller? A most brilliant, indefatigable, inspiring, imaginative, and thoroughly professional leader) but by a cast of excellent musicians all with sterling qualifications and a wealth of professional experience. The director Michael Spencely trained at Ballet Rambert and has years of experience of operatic stage direction, including being part of the Olympics staging team in 2012. Laurence Panter, music director, gained a choral scholarship at Cambridge, later graduating from Trinity Laban. He has a solid record as a tenor, pianist, and music director. The company do reach out to the local community in a way that other opera productions do not, cleverly incorporating local choirs into the choruses. This is intentional – outreach to the local community is at the heart of this company and is partly why they have been awarded funding two years in succession. The lead singer this year is a graduate of the National Opera Studio. Many singers are auditioned in Barefoot’s London studio, and only the very best are chosen. But as someone said above, read their web site. To produce a performance of this quality on such a paltry budget is nothing short of exceptional, and I urge anyone, especially the writer of this article, to go to see this production before making snap judgements about either its quality or its professionalism.