 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 May 1999 Issue No. 428 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
 |
 |
|
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 May 1999 Issue No. 428
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
|
|
|
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Special Focus Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Plain talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
I have been following current debates in England about the role of the arts in society. It seems that one of the principles of the New Labour election programme was to bring art to the people -- not so much popular art, but the higher art forms normally reserved for the elite: not only ballet and opera, but also theatre.
One reason young people generally forgo the theatre is steep ticket prices. Why is it that the young flock to the cinemas while theatre remains exclusive to the old and the middle-aged? One commentator has recently suggested that prices should be reduced on Tuesdays, an often slack day, so that young people can afford to go. But it is doubtful that what films offer, in the way of violence and sex, will ever be rivalled by conventional theatre.
New Labour's attempt to introduce serious art into young people's lives brought back memories of London in 1945, when I was a 24-year-old fresh from home who was suddenly thrown into the cultural crucible of London. The Labour government which came to power soon after my arrival also advocated art for the people, initiating such institutions as the Arts Council of Britain.
The arts needed no patronage, though. After the war people had a hunger for art and the young did not require luring. I was an example of this myself. Through the promenade concerts at the Royal Albert Hall I was introduced to classical music, and soon, through contacts in the English PEN I got to know Montague Slater, a left-wing playwright whom I had invited to lecture at the Egyptian Institute, where I worked. He had written a libretto for Benjamin Britten's opera, Peter Grimes, and his treatment, he told me, was based on a poem by George Crabbe (1754-1832) called The Borough, which was a portrait of a Suffolk village where a man called Peter Grimes had lived. Himself a native of Suffolk, Britten decided to use the poem as the basis for an opera.
To cut a long story short, I was invited by Slater to watch the opera at Sadler's Wells Theatre, the first production at that famous theatre since its war-time closure. The critics hailed it as "a decisive determination of a boy wonder to enter artistic adulthood". By 1948 the opera had had 21 productions around the world, including stagings at La Scala and the Metropolitan in New York.
But the main point is that it constituted my initiation into the genre. While I cannot call myself a true opera fan, certainly I have since then been able to enjoy this higher form of art, thanks to Peter Grimes. Part of the secret lies in the fact that, unlike the flimsy story-lines of many operas, this one had a good, well-structured story behind it.
As one critic put it, Britten strikes a fine balance between music and drama, telling a fine gripping story with the immediacy and clarity commonly associated with Puccini. Whenever I went to see an opera I always had to do my homework to get familiar with the work. But Peter Grimes, as the Daily Telegraph critic puts it, "communicated instantly and unforgettably".
