Classical & Opera: Look to the valleys for success in song

We often forget there is another country besides England south of our Border, but when it comes to opera, we would do well to emulate the Welsh

SCOTTISH Opera makes a welcome return to the big stage this week with a revival of Thomas Allen’s tasteful 2007 production of Rossini’s comic favourite The Barber of Seville. The word is that Allen has assembled a cracking young cast. The sad thing is it will be but a fleeting glimpse of Scottish Opera on a truly operatic scale.

For this is the company’s only mainstream production this side of Christmas, a sobering thought when only a few hundred miles away there is another national opera company in Britain that thinks big, acts big, and gets the political support to make opera a vital part of its country’s national culture.

That company is Welsh National Opera (WNO), and the recent arrival in Cardiff of David Pountney as its new chief executive and artistic director, together with a feast of artistic plans that make Scottish Opera seasons look like scraps from the table, is a huge national statement of self-belief in an art form that Scotland is being sold miserably short on.

The contrast is stark. Mainstream operas performed by Scottish Opera from now till May amount to four productions; Pountney moves in on a Welsh season that is already under way with Don Giovanni, and the prospect of seven other main productions to come, including Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Berlioz’s Beatrice and Benedict, and an assortment of Mozart, Rossini, Janacek, Puccini and Verdi.

Among the new boss’s plans for future seasons is his own full scale production of Alban Berg’s Lulu in 2013, a major 20th century opera that was once (1988) in Scottish Opera’s repertoire.

Pountney’s appointment is big news. He is a colossal force in the opera world – an internationally-renowned director as well as proven administrator. He cut his teeth with Scottish Opera during the company’s heyday in the late 1970s as director of productions, before spending a further ten years in a similar role with English National Opera. For the past decade he has been intendant (general director) of the Bregenz Festival in Austria.

More importantly, he has something to say about the current state of opera in Scotland, starting with the recent culling of the full-time Scottish Opera Orchestra. He’s not attacking the decision; he just thinks the orchestra was never needed in the first place.

“There were too many orchestras in Scotland, and it’s worth pointing out that when Scottish Opera didn’t have its own, the other Scottish orchestras took it in turns to get involved”, he says. “Even today that’s not an unusual model. Netherlands Opera uses four different orchestras.” Might we eventually see that happening again in Scotland?

“The most important thing is that the company gets back onto a level of performing regularly. I feel absolutely dreadful about it,” says the man who created some of Scottish Opera’s most memorable productions. “One of the most upsetting things for me is remembering how vital a company it was under the vigorous leadership of [Peter] Hemmings and [Alexander] Gibson, and then having to watch this endless decline.”

“Yes, there was a massive failure in the management of the company, with a complete lack of leadership over a 20-year period,” he argues, stressing that “this is not a criticism of the current management, which is doing what it can; the real blame has to go to arts politics in Scotland.”

In Cardiff, Pountney is confident of committed political support from the Welsh Assembly. “The years ahead will be tough, just as they will be for everybody,” he says. “But WNO is on a sound footing. We have a really excellent chorus and orchestra [Wales only has one other professional symphony orchestra], a home base – the new Millennium Centre – that is international in its outlook, and financially we are remarkably solid.”

“The Assembly views this international orientation as a plus point for Wales. They recognise that WNO attracts business in the form of visitors to Cardiff, the impact of which is to generate several times our Welsh Assembly subsidy in economic benefit.”

Compare that level of political accreditation to the situation in Scotland and a company that has been forced to operate in survival mode. “Arts institutions can’t be successful in survival mode,” he says. “Art isn’t about surviving; it can only be created when we have a surplus.

“If you are obliged to go out and raise money you have to have an exceptional message; your fundraisers have to have something to sell. Ninety per cent of the challenge is in having an ambitious artistic policy, something that is unique and gives profile to the stakeholders.”

Scottish Opera is struggling to do this. It operates, relatively speaking, on a shoestring budget, which is why we have a part-time season of mainstream opera and a consequential erosion of its artistic assets. The political will was, and is, for it to pay its way, keep quiet and not upset the applecart.

Yet it’s interesting to note that Pountney’s plan for WNO in tough economic times is, like Scottish Opera, to instigate greater collaboration with other companies around Europe and do productions with them.

Unfortunately, though, Scottish Opera is having to do that on the back foot. Its bargaining power can only be proportionate to what it has become. So, while some of the few main productions left are being assembled on that very formula, spurious associations, such as the recent “teaming up” with Music Theatre Wales and Traverse Theatre to bring Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek to Edinburgh, amount to little more than Scottish Opera putting its logo on the programme.

Pountney recalls the days when Scottish Opera called the shots. “Scots were always good at looking outwards; much better than England was,” he says, recalling when every Scottish Opera production toured as a matter of course to Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, even Oxford. Nowadays, it is WNO that conquers England, to the extent that its regular touring there brings in more revenue than its Welsh performances.

WNO is a source of national pride, he maintains. “It reflects the heritage of Wales, the home of song, which is embodied in a very sophisticated cultural institution.”

Can we really say the same about Scottish Opera? Or has it become resigned to its lot, lacking a scale of political investment and endorsement that is borne out of national pride, long-term ambition and the long-lost belief that sophistication is a worthy cultural aspiration?

This week’s Barber of Seville is truly welcome, but asking a part-time team to make an impact on the premiere league is a tall order.

• The Barber of Seville opens in Glasgow on Friday, and transfers to Inverness on 3 November, Aberdeen on 10 November and Edinburgh on 15 November