Plain talk

I do not think there is a country so fond of reports as Britain. I still remember the dozens of White Papers I used to get from Her Majesty's Stationary Office about issues that varied from the future of the colonies to the state of poetry in Britain.

Earlier this month, yet another report was published about a subject close to my heart. This is Sir Richard Eyre's report on the state of ballet and opera in Britain. Indeed not one British newspaper, it seems, has overlooked what has proved to be a controversial report.

What gives the report its value is the fact that its author had for some time worked at Covent Garden where he directed a successful La Traviata. Sir Richard, then, is an insider, and one in a position to compare the past and present of the performing arts in Britain. Nor does Sir Richard mince his words. There is one passage from his report which I have seen in practically every newspaper article on the subject. "All too often the situation resembles a First World War battlefield, where the poor bloody infantry are trying to fulfil a strategy about which they have not been consulted."

When the Royal Opera House was inaugurated in 1946 I was working in London as cultural attaché and I still remember the excitement the event generated. The Royal Opera House runs Covent Garden and two separate performing companies, Royal Opera and Royal Ballet. It receives a subsidy from the Arts Council as well as lottery money. Apart from that it has managed to raise funds to the tune of 70 million for redevelopment.

The report comes down heavily on the Board of the Royal Opera House, criticising the members for what it perceives as an elitist attitude which has resulted in what Sir Richard describes as "the cancer that will destroy the Opera House unless it is treated." The attitude of the board members is characterised by "arrogance and presumption", as well as lack of respect for the donors, in this case the Arts Council. Members, it would appear, regard the mere fact of their being on the board as an end in itself.

The report alleges that the organisation "has inspired righteous indignation, invited mockery, invoked accusations of irresponsibility, overspending, mismanagement and elitism, and begged questions about the validity of the principle on which all arts organisations receive taxpayers money."

However, despite the severe criticism he heaps on the Royal Opera House, Sir Richard rejects the idea that it should be privatised. Raymond Gubbay, a classical music entrepreneur, writes that Sir Richard has missed a golden opportunity to follow the privatisation line -- this option, in Gubbay's opinion, would release the Arts Council money for all the needy arts organisations all over the country.

Going through the report and the responses it elicited, my thoughts turned, naturally enough, to our own opera house. The problems are not quite the same, but there is an overlap in the issues involved. Sir Richard, for example, recommends the appointment of a "visionary" artistic director. Underlining the word artistic is important here. I believe that there should be two kinds of directors, one managerial, the other artistic. Directing the arts, I believe, is an art in itself. I remember when I was in Germany as cultural counsellor I paid a visit to a special college for cultural management which had different departments for the varied branches of the arts.

Although it does not follow that a good artist will make a good director, there are successful cases of the artist-turned-director breed. I remember the time when our old Opera House was run by three artists in different fields: the director was Soliman Naguib, one of our leading actors, the deputy-director was Abdel-Rahman Sidky, a distinguished poet, and the secretary of the opera was Salah Zohny, a prominent short-story writer. Frankly, I cannot think of a better team.