The muddle ground of British arts

What do we need and what can we afford?" No such strategic thinking, Sir John Tooley writes, has ever informed the policy of the British government or the Arts Council towards the performing arts. Tooley was concerned with the management of the Royal Opera House through what many think of as its great days, from 1955 to 1988, first as David Webster's assistant and then as general director. He is well placed to conclude, in effect, that we have gone from muddling through to plain muddle. His book came out as Covent Garden prepared to reopen after a two-year closure and a well-aired series of scandals and blunders; it brings little cheer.

"There is," he writes, "still no political will to support an adequate level of funding of the arts in the United Kingdom." Earlier governments had at least shown goodwill, but Margaret Thatcher's belief in the market and her conviction that arts managers were profligate "largely negated the fundamental principles" of funding as they had been conceived.

Reliance on sponsorship and ever higher seat prices to make up for underfunding merely turned Covent Garden into "a place for corporate entertainment, no longer a theatre for opera and ballet lovers". The alternative, more cost-cutting, threatens routine and staleness, but it is not clear that the present government acknowledges this. On the contrary, "high culture ranks low"; the Arts Council "has lost its way"; "the essential arts infrastructure is crumbling"; at Covent Garden "we are drifting fast" from the ideal of a permanent orchestra and chorus.

In House is timely because there are signs that, having spent our lottery money on the rebuilding of the Royal Opera House, the government has as usual not properly considered the strategic question "what do we need and what can we afford?" Does the country need an opera house of international standard? If it does, will it pay for the proper running of opera and ballet seasons with an adequate subsidy? The answer to the first question might conceivably be "no"; given that the answer to the second seems in practice still to be "perhaps - on the cheap". Comparisons with other European countries where subsidy is much higher, Tooley found, "cut no ice with government": and so we go on.

A pity, then, that the book is not as effective as it is timely. It reads like two books lashed together. The first is a memoir, of a fairly standard kind though more substantial than most, telling of the author's experience in the management of opera and ballet, with plenty of anecdotes,recollections of dealings with conductors, producers, choreographers and singers - sharpest when the people are dead, cagier as we approach the present - and an account of problems and achievements that remain impressionistic, with few figures. The second book is a blow-by-blow narrative of Covent Garden's troubles over the past ten years, cleaving to the board minutes, year by year; this gives plenty of facts and figures but without even trying to pull them together.

The resulting impression of an operatic Through the Looking-Glass may be justified, but a couple of tables or graphs to set out what happened to funding or seat prices throughout the period would have brought more illumination. It is entertaining to hear that the present chairman, the "tough businessman" Sir Colin Southgate, "is so uncomfortable with artists that he goes out of his way to avoid them" (he therefore neglected to tell the musical director, Bernard Haitink, of the decision in extremis to close down in 1999 and go for redundancies), but at this point we need a greater effort at synthesis.

Not that Tooley could be the reasonably impartial historian the house needs. He is understandably dismayed to find a lifetime's achievement brought within an inch of annihilation, with Covent Garden's "immensely strong and vibrant family spirit" and the "serious but relaxed and intrigue-free working atmosphere" prevalent in his day - for which there is other witness - almost dispelled.

About his successor Jeremy Isaacs he has little good to say: wrong background away from theatre, doubtful managerial skills, mistaken in remaining on the board while chief executive, too often absent or remote, above all guilty of running down the previous management. Strictures on various productions under the Isaacs regime would be more convincing if Tooley were readier to acknowledge that some of his own artistic choices are open to question: he does not explain why, as a manager closely concerned with artistic matters, he intervened only at "the penultimate stage rehearsal" to sort out Andrei Serban's muddled Fidelio production - it was then too late; lifeless productions of Norma and Samson he sets down as concessions to errant singers (Margaret Price and Jon Vickers); a cheapie Sonnambula badly conducted by the prima donna's little-known husband goes unmentioned.

Still, someone who, like me, has attended Covent Garden for more than 50 years can recall many more rewarding evenings than poor ones, both under the Webster-Tooley and the Isaacs managements. It was all done in an antiquated theatre, on a relative shoestring (still costing millions; opera is like that), and in a spirit of seemingly relaxed amateurishness and egalitarianism that bothered conductors such as Georg Solti and Erich Kleiber, used to absolute command within a strict hierarchy. The tone of the memoir, one of general tolerance and accommodation, matches Tooley's record; the only real "villain" is the retired dancer Michael Somes, shown as a self-appointed guardian of tradition who froze out incomers. It would be good to see Covent Garden in its newly super-efficient building recover its old professional cohesion. Fingers crossed!

John Rosselli is the author of the Life of Mozart (1998).