Page 204 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024
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it will atrophy. Increased access to box-ticking mediocrity cannot be our goal,
surely.
We need to celebrate what is actually an extraordinary moment in our musical
history. The visual arts in the UK have been celebrated no end in recent years. But
it was Sadlers Wells that saw the premiere of the first great British opera, Britten’s
Peter Grimes, played all over the world to this day. A couple of months ago, I was
at the Opera Bastille for the Parisian premiere of Thomas Adès’s Exterminating
Angel. Full house, press sensation. British opera is conquering the world. The Arts
Council seems not to have noticed.
Ian Bostridge is a singer, historian and Prospect’s classical columnist. His latest book is ‘Song and Self’
(Faber)
