A Penny of Observation
NATIONALISM AND THE OPERA.
Last week in the House of Commons the Duchess of Atholl, by asking how far the grant of the Opera Subsidy would result in the " encouragement and assistance of British authors, composers, and executive artists," touched on the most significant aspect of the whole vexed question. When a nation, naturally suspicious of all art, is dragooned or bam- boozled into subsidizing one branch of it, one would have thought that the art-form chosen for support would have been one which could, to some extent, be regarded as national— in which, that is to say, the nation had shown itself to be proficient and for which pretty well the whole of it had a liking. The idea of a National Theatre, though it has never been popular, is at least not inherently ridiculous, because we have, as it happens, produced the greatest body of drama in 'all literature, besides a sound and strongly individual tradition of acting. On the Other hand, we have never been much good at either creating, perfOrming or appreciating opera ; indeed, the respectabilitY—the sort of gilt-edged glamour— which it has acquired in the eyes of its comparatively small but " high-class " public is due largely to its alien origins. Covent Garden audiences can listen to Germans, Italians, and Russians roaring away passionately for hours on end with- out that vague feeling of uneasiness with which most of them would watch English actors expressing similar emotions in more normal accents on the legitimate stage. This is due to the subconscious belief -that anyone who performs in public is making rather a fool of himself ; and no_ body minds ifjor; eigners do, that. HoweVer that may be, the :Opera Subsidy should produce an interesting controversy between those tax- payers who want to support Home industries and those who want the best for their money.
Previous page
