Ringing the changes in opera funding

Published on Tuesday 13 October 2009 18:57

THEY say that opera is "the most expensive human endeavour, with the possible exception of war". And Wagner's Ring cycle is the most expensive opera of all.

It runs over four evenings and 15 hours of music, from the opening ripples of the river Rhine to the crashing down in flames of Valhalla in the "twilight of the gods". The range of sets and special effects required is of mythic proportions. Wagner commissioned a special building – the festival theatre in Bayreuth – to stage the cycle. It would have been impossible without the deep pockets of King Ludwig II of Bavaria.

Not much has changed in 150 years. When Covent Garden staged the Ring in 2007 their website declared it represented "the Everest" for any opera company. And assaults on opera's highest peak do not come cheap. Any economist will tell you that scarcity drives up prices – and the Ring is not often performed. The singers who can manage the leading roles are few. And if you are likely to stage the Ring only once in a professional lifetime, it is easy to fall into a mindset that demands the best of everything. Why spoil the ship for a ha'pworth of tar, as they say.

Fortunately the economic laws of scarcity operate on other parts of the system too. Tickets are snapped up immediately, at vast prices. Sponsors, especially those associated with wealth and luxury, fall over themselves to be aligned with such excellence and its high-class clientele. And government funding has a special place for companies displaying world class levels of performance that reflect well on the implied cultural health of the nation. So you are not likely to lose money by climbing this particular Everest – you might even make some.

But it is exhausting. It can distract attention from more mundane issues while the expedition is being planned and executed. And the majority of mountaineering accidents happen on the way down. It is difficult to return to "normal" after scaling such heights.

A year after its acclaimed Ring cycle at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2003, for example, Scottish Opera made nearly half of its staff redundant to help them clear a deficit that had been quietly accumulating in the preceding years. The Scottish Executive's failure to bail them out was seen as a significant change in the cultural landscape and a warning of things to come.

When International Futures Forum started to take a keen interest in arts funding a few years ago it looked doubtful whether Scotland would ever again be able to mount an indigenous attempt on the Everest that is the Ring. And that troubled me, because I believe the Ring is a master work. It is a timeless narrative of love and power at a level that is both epic and domestic. It is a story for our apocalyptic times, cathartic, hopeful and redemptive. I felt uneasy living in a nation that might turn its back on such nourishment.

And so, with some intrepid friends I began to explore ways in which the Ring might be realised in Scotland in ways that do not rely on this costly model of lavish, once-in-a-lifetime production.

I soon found my way to Graham Vick, who cut his teeth at Scottish Opera before setting up the City of Birmingham Touring Opera Company in 1987 and going on to become one of the most admired opera directors in the world. Vick has championed "community opera" – not special opera composed for community groups, but "real", challenging, difficult opera performed by and set in communities.

He has taken opera out of the temple into venues without red carpets and chandeliers – and often into the streets themselves. His reduced version of the Ring – staged over two evenings, with an orchestra of only 18 musicians, and on a set "the size of a badminton court" – was a breakthrough in 1990.

I began to get a sense of what might be possible in Scotland and assembled a coalition of organisations, with Graham Vick at the helm, ready to pursue the Ring as a powerful cultural intervention in Scottish society. We applied for some seedcorn funding from Scottish Arts Council, but the project was turned down and, to my shame, I became quietly discouraged and moved on to other matters.

Then last month I took part in an extraordinary event. Not only did I get to experience a performance of Die Walkure (the second of the Ring operas) in Scotland. I actually played in the orchestra. I was with the Edinburgh Players Opera Group – an amateur group who, under the leadership of Philip Taylor and Mike Thorne, have already staged one complete cycle of the Ring since 2001 and are now into their second.

The model is as far as it could be from Covent Garden. This is an Everest expedition in the audacious spirit of Mallory – donning stout boots and winter tweeds to head off up a mountain that fascinated him all his life "because it was there".

No-one is paid to perform – yet the orchestra bristles with fine players, retired pros, teachers, semi-professionals who come from all over Scotland and further afield for the rare opportunity to play this wonderful music. The same is true of the singers – brilliant young professionals who would give their right arm for the opportunity to sing these roles for real.

This was not a product of the economy of money, but the economy of love. And it perfectly illustrated one of the conclusions from our own work on more sustainable ways to fund the arts and creativity: of course we need money, but keep it at the margins – so that it does not corrupt these more valuable currencies.

&#149 Graham Leicester is the director of the International Futures Forum, a non-profit group that responds to critical issues facing government, business and communities. www.internationalfuturesforum.com