Page 203 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

ecosystem that has allowed British music to enrich so many lives at home and
punch above its weight on the world stage.

There is a malaise affecting classical music in the UK

Having just been in Suffolk, I might mention first the withdrawal of funding from

the Britten Sinfonia, an ensemble I’ve worked with across the world. They are a
model for combining excellence—playing and programming of brilliance and

imagination—and regional outreach in East Anglia. Yet the Arts Council pulled

the plug. They’ll survive, but it will be difficult.

I’ve been working with the English National Opera since I took part as a child in a

production of Massenet’s Werther in 1977. It was a great moment when what had
started out as the Sadlers Wells Opera was reborn as the ENO and made its home

in one of the iconic London theatres, the Coliseum. It gave the capital two
companies, reflecting both sides of the operatic coin. While Covent Garden was a

global player, bringing the greatest singers in the world to London, the democratic

Coli nurtured local talent and sang in English, reaching out to a wider audience.
“Opera for all,” they called it, and as a child it seemed to me that the red plush of

the ROH seats and the serviceable blue of the Coli down the road meant that all

bases were covered. Outside the capital, Opera North followed, along with
Glyndebourne Touring and the other national companies. Alongside this, the

BBC’s mission was to bring these “elite” arts to a non-elite audience. Channel 4

followed suit.

The Arts Council was founded by John Maynard Keynes around the same time as
the NHS, and it spoke the same noble language. Medicine should be available to

all, regardless of means; and the summits of the arts are both a civic entitlement

and a civic responsibility. The arts are precious; we hold them in trust for the
future, recreating them generation by generation. Nowadays, that also means

taking art into the regions, nurturing art in the regions, recognising the ethnic

diversity of the nation at large. It shouldn’t mean losing sight of the underlying
aim, or of the importance of sustaining centres of excellence. If genius is, as

Carlyle had it, the infinite capacity to take pains, then it requires patient support or