ARTS AND MINDS - JOURNALS OF AN ARTS ADDICT 2007-13

EPISODE 19 AUGUST-OCTOBER 2010

JOHN TUSA

A Week with Richard Wagner; no escaping, no victory. Tony Blair on tv ; why can’t he just say ’sorry’? Karita Mattila, the magnificent Finn in gold and green. My personal confession – whenever I really wanted a post or position, it always turned out badly. Michael Kaiser on the horrors of the Covent Garden Board. Neil MacGregor’s cultural diplomacy with Iran at the British Museum. Rory Kinnear’s ”Hamlet” – witty, honest, moving. Dealing with funding crises in the arts: Deborah Bull - “never waste a good crisis”. Joanna Macgregor – “be expedient, pragmatic, fuelled by bad temper”. Losing funding doesn’t mean you are no good.

Saturday August 21. To Bayreuth for our first ever “Ring Cycle”, tickets made possible by Tony Hall’s Royal Opera connections with the “Opus Arte” DVD company. Roland Ott, Tony Hall’s man on the “Opus Arte” project, on the scenes behind the scenes: “ It is very hot in the pit; they are all their in their tee shirts, including (the conductor, Christian) Thielemann. We wanted to have a camera on him but he said ‘no, I look too fat!’” Which judging by his suited curtain call, he is not - just male vanity. And what does the orchestra think of him? “They love him, especially the principal desks who come every year.” And what does Roland think? Bear in mind that Roland is an East German, an ”ossie” and a bit puritanical! “Oh, Christian can be a bit lazy!” What can that mean? That when a fussy technician asks for something to be repeated, Thielemann will say, “Yes, I understand, but I don’t need to do it again now!” My interpretation – not lazy just economical.

When the theme of Wotan’s Farewell to Brunnhilde suddenly arrives out of nowhere, it smacks you in the solar plexus. Why is it that a father’s farewell to and punishment of a daughter brings out the most impassioned, the most desolating music of the entire “Ring”?

Sunday, 22 August. The “day off” during the four night “Ring” cycle. We wander through Bamberg’s teeming holiday streets filled with beer and oompah bands. This is real ”oompah” country. But Wagner won’t go away. Think of what Wotan says of Brunnhilde: “You owe all that you are to me... My will alone woke you to life!” Difficult that but no more than you might expect of a god. Cyn Hall says that it is balanced by the fact that clearly Brunnhilde is capable of free will in the most complete act of defiance of Wotan’s commands. She is not just a passive creature of his mind and purposes. The Fricka/Wotan exchange in “Rheingold”, too, is fascinating, two views of life, society, creativity. Fricka speaks up for order, stability, marriage, vows, commitment. Every society needs these. These are ”holy vows” and must be maintained. But wait! Wotan: “ Unholy call I the vows that bind unloving hearts!” Well Wagner knew a bit about that. Fricka returns to the battle: “Not only adultery, but incest too! Is there no limit?” Wotan/Wagner pushed to the limit: “ A thing may happen though it has not happened before...You never learn to conceive a deed before that deed comes to pass. Your concern is for things that have been; but what is still to come – to that turn I all my thoughts!!” That is the core of the work and what a fantastic stage exchange it is.

Wednesday, 25 August. So then, what is it all about? You can’t spend a week of your life and sit through 15 hours of music without trying to have an opinion! To start with, it is not about “Gods and Heroes!” Well, it is but it is about the death of the Gods, not their triumph or elevation, about the fallibility of heroes, especially those who “know no fear!” Above all, it is about the moral degradation of power, notably the power of gold/money. Whoever owns the Ring and uses its power must forego love. What overcomes the “hero who knows no fear” but the experience of love. What could be more moral than that? And everyone who seizes the ring for power is destroyed first morally, then physically. Brunnhilde transcends the evil of the ring by declining to use it and seeing it only as an expression of her love for Siegfried. The final destruction is the only way of purging the world of the corruptions of power, broken treaties, overweening ambition, greed, and all the other moral failings so amply displayed throughout.

Watching it straight through leaves you bewildered, overwhelmed, exhausted and your head a mass of themes, tunes, associations, that will not let go of you. Insanely expensive but for us a fiftieth anniversary celebration, a once in a lifetime experience.

Wednesday. September 12. Back to the present with a wrench. Tuning in to BBC World Television on our return journey, Andrew Marr’s interview with Tony Blair. He looks ill at ease, seated, hands stiff, legs oddly parted, tight around the gills. His default option is a winsome, disarming smile, though it may no longer disarm many. He gives little – a recognition that he did not get on with Brown, thought he would be a bad PM, thought he would lose the election, believed deviating from New Labour “one jot” would be a disaster. And the war – well, no regrets, no apologies, his critics were, “well, that is what they will say, won’t they!” And Iran: well, he would go to war over their possible possession of nuclear weapons!! Yeah, “You and whose army?” Not the British – we have run out of troops and equipment. Not the US, they are overstretched too. It is both dispiriting and depressing.

Tuesday September7. The ”autumn season” in London begins. Gilhooly throws a big event for the Wigmore’s 110^th birthday. At the party, several people tell Annie they are surprised that I retire as Chairman next year. But the truth is that with all the major problems solved or settled – JG as Director and successor to Bill Lyne, redevelopment, lease purchase, financial stability, programming innovation and quality – there is nothing left to do. Staying on would have been wrong.

Meanwhile, the Royal Opera conductor, David Syrus, is being very funny about Bayreuth where he worked for many years. There was the epic occasion when HE had to sing Siegfried - !! – from the side of the stage because the Siegfried had broken down and there was no ‘cover’! In Act Three of “Siegfried” as he sings to Brunnhilde, she replies, “Ich kann sie nicht horen!”( I can’t hear you!) David: “I then expected the audience to shout out ‘Wir kann sie nicht horen auch!” (‘We can’t hear you either!!’) Years ago, we heard another version. Two old ladies were heard saying after David’s emergency appearance as Siegfried: “You know, I zink zat young Siegfried vill be very good vun day!” The Bayreuth acoustic, glorious in the auditorium is murder to conduct in. Georg Solti hated it: “This is vorst place in vorld to play Vagner!” But wonderful Reggie Goodall had one piece of advice to singers at Bayreuth: “Always behind (the beat), always behind!”

Wednesday, September 8. Evening to King’s Place to see half a dozen Bill Pye water sculptures. They are subtle, beautifully engineered, the games he plays with the tension of the water meniscus elemental. It is always a pleasure to wonder at them, play with them, be engaged by them. There is no sense of repetition of stale ideas.

Friday, September 10. The Wigmore Anniversary Gala opening - Karita Mattila, the magnificent Finn. She sweeps on, statuesque in gold and diamante straps. An ambitious programme – Seven Early Songs by Berg, then Four easier, or more familiar, Brahms songs. She has asked for a start of concert announcement: “Mme Mattila says she is suffering from the after-effects of a cold....” etc etc. She wanted John Gilhooly to do it personally but he said “No, if I went on, everyone would assume she had cancelled!” But is there a problem? No way, the voice is big, even but shaded, nuanced, floated, with amazing chest tones.

Part Two has a stunning group of Sibelius songs - Mattila now daringly re-costumed in the identical dress in green. Then four songs by Richard Strauss culminating in the great cries of agony about the death of Adonis! Six times she cries “Adonis!”, triple forte, six times she throws her arms around her head, round her body to convey her grief. The sound is overwhelming, the acting wonderfully over the top. The house erupts. She clutches her diminutive accompanist to her generous bosom! One encore, “My gift to you, such a beautiful house, such a wonderful audience”. It is Strauss’s “Zeugnung”, never more beautifully sung, never. More eruptions. She departs, clutching bouquets. I emerge grinning stupidly. Our judge friend, Nico Brown-Wilkinson, asks why? “ Because it was so enjoyable, so extreme, so brilliantly done! It makes me absurdly happy”.

Wednesday September 15. One of the exercises we did during the Clore Fellowship programme was to get Fellows to sum up and express their “life journeys” on paper, in words and images. When I did my own life journey chart for the Clore Sixes, I discovered that on the four occasions that I made a deliberate personal choice to take a post or get a job, each one had ended in disappointment or failure. First, leaving the BBC and joining what turned out to be the CIA-backed journalist outfit “Forum World Features” in 1966! Second, joining BBC “Nationwide” in the late 1960s, spending my time doing ridiculous items on the South East “opt-out” of the populist magazine programme “Nationwide” because it was television! Third, taking the position of becoming Chairman of the V&A when I was already Chair of the University of the Arts London. I had to resign from the V&A role because it clashed with the UAL position. Fourth, going to be President of Wolfson, Cambridge after I finished at BBC World Service in 1993, a vanity appointment on my part. The common theme was that my wish to do the job, usually driven by vanity, blinded me to the problems that would follow from getting it.

Thursday, September 16. Early return to Sevenoaks for the annual day with Michael Kaiser, one time Director of the Royal Opera. He tells stories about the awfulness of the Royal Opera when he was trying to rescue it. “Board meetings used to last five hours. In the first hour, each Board member had a red biro and spent the time personally correcting and redrafting ROH press releases!” Later:“ We had a long argument about whether the taps in the washrooms should be separate taps or should end in a single mixer? Traditionalists said taps were always separate. Modernists said the mixer was the modern style. In the end I said I wasn’t prepared to talk about it any more!” Press relations were a nightmare. Board members talked to the press; journos camped in the various Covent Garden pubs and staff wandered out and dished the dirt daily. Michael got a grip by insisting that he was the sole point of control for news and comment. But when he launched a campaign of wining and dining journos and talking about the way ahead, he was called “Pollyanna”. But he refused to play the “it’s all rubbish here and it’s all someone else’s fault” game that the press wanted.

The Fellows quiz Michael on his “work/life balance”; he insists that it is perfect, just that he works all the time. Over lunch, they ask him about London: he says he will never return. He used to cry a lot – and he was appalled by the savagery of the press, understandably.

Wednesday, September 22. Controller of BBC Radio Four Mark Damazer’s farewell party in the dreary Council Chamber at Broadcasting House. All the portraits of previous Directors General that used to hang there have been banished to the White City complex leaving only Reith presiding magisterially, quite the best painting anyway. Two good speeches from Tim Davey and Mark Thompson, with good natured ribbing of Damazer’s intellectualism, as when he told a grizzled tv news reporter that his proposal for a news story was “piling Pelion upon Ossa!”. Thompson says he himself was always treated as an indecisive intellectual until he stood beside Damazer! What is the real lesson of Damazer? Thought and intelligence deliver great programming.

Neil MacGregor and Joanna Mackle were there, both reeling from the success of “A History of the World in a Hundred Objects”, cock a hoop at the way visitors come to the British Museum to follow the “100 Objects Trail”. Neil: “The numbers are up; it has transformed the way the Museum is used.” The big headache is publication of the book. Neil: “BBC Books turned it down as a commercial proposition last autumn. Then they changed their mind this spring! The trouble is that we didn’t realise how different a radio script is from the printed text!” This is hardly the first time BBC Books have demonstrated their inability to understand the importance of quality rather than mass product. I mention the BM’s loan of the precious “Cyrus Cylinder” to Teheran masterminded by Neil: “It was quite extraordinary. At the opening, President Ahmedinajad’s speech was pure Gaullism. There was only one mention of Islam. It was all about Iran’s deep pre-Islamic culture and traditions. ‘Cyrus the founder of human rights, of law, of toleration!’ There was only one mullah at the reception!” It makes Neil look more like an alternative foreign minister than ever.

Monday, September 27. To Chesterfield for a Clore “Short Course” to talk about leadership in hard times which these increasingly are. How should you act? For instance: don’t moan, don’t shroud-wave (ie exaggerate the impact of any cuts), don’t immediately cut education and outreach, don’t cut your ticket prices, don’t go populist in your artistic policy, don’t cut regular maintenance and don’t cut across the board. In a phrase, don’t undermine the strategic integrity of your institution. What can you do to make things better? “Open the doors” of your institution to groups, people, ideas and events; remember the three key letters - “E-T-D” - the key to arts activity: “Enjoy, Talk, Do”.

Tuesday, September 28. Farewell party at the Soane Museum for Helen Acton, founding administrator of the Clore Programme. The Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, was a regular speaker at Clore meetings. At the party, he tells of his ghastly experiences for a recent tv documentary where he and two other “celebrities” - eg the chef Jamie Oliver, the historian, David Starkey – try to teach a group of, say, 40 “feral” kids about their specialism -cookery, poetry, history etc etc. The idea being that if the “worst” get the best teaching, they can be saved from their circle of non-achievement. Dream on! The kids were lethal, exploitative, ruthless, manipulative until Andrew lost his temper totally in the last five minutes, completely, on camera. He was shaken and upset and still has three more “teaching” sessions to do with them. Hunting in a pack, the kids have the upper hand. After all why should they want to write poetry or learn history? It’s a sentimental illusion.

On our way to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant – “Vanilla Black”, off Chancery Lane - we see a large group of people gathered at the NE corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. A sight seeing tour, a union meeting, a stag party? No such luck – the homeless and hungry at the mobile soup kitchen. Several hundred. Let’s kid ourselves that they are not all homeless – but they sure as hell are all hungry. Silent, mainly single, wholly unthreatening, deep despair, a chastening sight.

September 30. Preview of the RNT ”Hamlet” with Rory Kinnear. In brief, exhilarating, a powerful, narrative drive in an Elsinore of our times where hoods watch and report on every action, thought, word. Kinnear is direct, open, honest, plays the madman wonderfully properly, witty, and finally, moving, a major assumption. Ah, the laughs are where Shakespeare put them, they are in the lines he wrote. A friend says, “The RSC goes for laughs in places that Shakespeare did not want them, no, where he did not write them. They want to jolly the audience along!” Our worst fears of the RSC confirmed. But this was rewarding, joyous, a full artistic realisation.

Thursday, October 7. The Leopold Trio offer a stunning programme at Wigmore, at least, stunning for us. Schnittke’s Trio, driven, explosive, argued, abrasive, lyrical. Then Taneyev’s Piano Quartet with Alexander Mazdar, a glorious, flowing but wonderfully constructed piece, rarely played. The hall is barely half full! Afterwards, exhilarated but also ashamed and guilty, I tell the violinist, Isabelle van Keulen, that I am really sorry for the poor turn out! She replies calmly: “ We play to the people who are there, not to the empty seats!” What strength!

Wednesday October13. With arts cuts and austerity looming, Clore Fellowship pitched a deliberately challenging title for the Open Day at King’s Place: “The Case for Optimism – Doing More with Less”. The former Royal Ballet dancer, Deborah Bull leads of by warning that “growth is not an inalienable right”. In supporting the arts, “anecdote is not data”; “what we do is more important than what we are”. More challenging still, we must try to “achieve more with less”. She urges us “never to waste a good crisis” by avoiding radical rethinking. But Jatinder Verma from “Tara Arts” really set the place alight. Two years ago, they lost 50% of their ACE funding. What did they do? “We believed they were wrong! We would not die – we believed in stories and stories belong to everyone!” They decided to “go local” giving up national touring. They let in young people, kids who wanted to do full Shakespeare because their schools would not let them because they were judged “too backward”! They always believed in themselves: “funding is not a judgement on your work”. It proved a formula for success. Finally, the pianist, Joanna MacGregor, with advice for how to act. Play politics with passion but avoid getting angry! You need extreme flexibility: “the expedient and pragmatic fuelled by bad temper”. Anger has its place in arguing for the arts; “Rage comes back; get crazy, don’t apologise”. Thought of the day from one of the panel: “Art is a mystery – without mystery we are not human. It’s why we wake up in the morning”.

3,108 words 15 April 2025