Up the Garden
BY BORIS FORD FOR some ten years now Mr. David Webster, the General Administrator of the Royal Opera House, has been staggering manfully about the Garden, trying to balance his two baskets on his head. The Review 1946-1956 which the Board of the Opera House has just issued refers to this period as 'one of intense constructive development' and com- mends Mr. Webster for his 'very significant contribution to the results achieved.' One of the results, none the less, is that the finances of Covent Garden remain at a deficit of about £100,000 after subsidy, and in stating this financial problem the Review goes on to ask whether 'opera and ballet of a high quality [are] really wanted in our country.'
The answer to this is that the public (as far as London is concerned) wants opera and ballet to the extent of having taken up 84 per cent. of the house's seating capacity over the past five years. The case for supporting Covent Garden, how- ever, rests upon profounder considerations than the public's `wants,' which, even if they filled the house to capacity at every performance, would not materially lessen the need for a sub- stantially bigger subsidy than is provided at present, even allowing for the further £20,000 that the Treasury is allocating, via the Arts Council, to Covent Garden this year. It is when one tries to examine this question of a subsidy that one comes up against a number of obscurities, some of which, one cannot help feeling, must be intended. For instance, to take an issue that is currently bringing Mr. Kubelik and Sir Thomas Beecham into conflict, what propor- tion of the £100,000 that Covent Garden spends on soloists in a 'normal year' is taken up by importing performers from abroad, and is this amount growing or diminishing? Then we are given no idea of revenue, and estimated revenue, from broadcasting and television, though one has reasons for believing that the management expects to make a good deal from television. And is it too much to expect Mr. Webster to divulge the cost of past failures, since even without Sir Thomas's testimony, it is certain that considerable sums have been 'lost' on opera during the past decade?
The main and most serious obscurity, however, arises because the subsidy is made to Covent Garden as such and because the Board persists in talking about opera and ballet as if they were Siamese twins which flourish or expire together. Now there are obvious and unchallengeable reasons why Covent Garden should want to provide both opera and ballet, and why opera and ballet, in their turn, should be glad to share a common theatre and management. But artistically the two are thoroughly dissimilar arts and, what is more immediately to the point, their finances offer a striking contrast The Review throws out some hints about this contrast; it admits that ballet 'is the less expensive of the two arts' and that it has made profits on its successful tours in the United States. But this is a wholly inadequate account, for any discussion of subsidies turns on how much is needed for opera and how much for ballet; and the attempt to compound their balances or deficits is to hide the very facts which justify a subsidy at all.
The facts. on investigation, appear to be as follows. At present, according to Dame Ninette de Valois, the Sadler's Wells Ballet 'pays for itself.' In other words, the Company costs £90,000 a year and it takes rather more than this at the box-office. But what, it may be asked, is included under this heading? The Review, in its table of costs, lists the following items among others : Chorus .. £43,000 Ballet .. £90,000 Soloists .. £100,000 Music Staff £18,000 On an earlier page, in a paragraph headed 'Soloists,' it says (my italics): . . opera and ballet must have soloists, and here we enter the international market . . . the laws of supply and demand tend to take control of their cost. . . . Covent Garden is not alone in having to compete for the services of conductors and soloists in opera and ballet . . we can muster much native talent in opera and ballet, but there A-times and occasions when we must look elsewhere for help.
One would hardly have deduced from this, indeed one could hardly be meant to deduce, that the sum of £90,000 for ballet includes the salaries of everyone connected with the Company : not only the corps, but also all the soloists and music staff, as well as the dressers, conductors, stage directors, manager, and Madam herself.
The profits of the Ballet Company from its tours in the United States, which are not included in the calculation about ballet paying for itself, are not given in the Review, though it is admitted that they have provided a substantial contribu- tion towards meeting the annual deficit of £100,000. Exactly how great a contribution is this? According to Dame Ninette de Valois again, the Company made about £50,000 on its last American tour, and this was only a short tour of eleven weeks. Moreover, one learns from the Review that while opera loses £2,900 a week while on provincial tour, the ballet makes a slight profit on its eight to nine weeks' tours of the provinces every year. Thus it is clear that the Ballet Company has not only been making its own ends meet, but has to a considerable extent been keeping Covent Garden itself off the rocks. And this picture of Covent Garden's dependence on the success of the ballet is confirmed when one discovers that the 84 per cent. figure of attendance for opera and ballet together conceals the fact that, so far this season, attendances for the ballet alone have amounted to as much as 97 per cent. of capacity.
In short, when the Covent Garden Board ends one chapter of its Review with the words, 'Terpsichore in her voyage through Italy, France and Russia, has halted in England,' it could hardly have expressed itself in more fatuous terms, for apart from the odd itinerary of the trip, the day that Terpsi- chore halts in this country will be a serious one for Covent Garden. Not that such a thing is in the least impossible. One day, maybe this year, maybe next, Fonteyn will retire, and Mr. Webster will have lost, overnight, his major asset and a fickle and capricious public its idol. Today's fashion will give way to tomorrow's whim, and ballet may suddenly find that it is no longer paying for itself. And then the prospect for opera would indeed be grave, for it would lose its hidden subsidy from ballet and also it would be compelled to give up to ballet a reasonable share of the Arts Council subsidy which it monopolises at present. At that point the full cost of opera would be seen undisguised for the first time, and at a moment when Covent Garden would be singularly ill-prepared to ride the ensuing Philistine storm. The truth is that opera is a very expensive commodity in England today, and ballet might well be an expense tomorrow (as indeed it has been in the past). And this is a truth that needs to be known in full detail if opera and ballet are to receive subsidies large enough to enable them to flourish. As it is, Mr. Webster may be making a 'very significant contribution' to something or other, but certainly not towards helping one understand the financial calculations on which his Covent Garden porterage is conducted.
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