Michael Tumelty’s trenchant criticism of the decision to reduce the orchestra of Scottish Opera to half-time working is high on anger and suggestions of mischief (“Hang your head in shame, Scottish Opera, you are a disgrace to the nation”, Herald Arts, August 28).
But let me first state an interest as a supporter of the company and who, therefore, has an acquaintance with some of the management team he derides. I support the company and attend whenever I can because I enjoy opera and admire the artists, technicians and qualities of our national company and, as it has come back from the artistic doldrums and financial ruin superbly well, its management. It was evidently mismanaged and ill-guided in the past but we still have a performing company in Scotland.
What is missing, in my view, from Mr Tumelty’s important revelations (revelations which were, by the way, circulating for many weeks as I was told over a month ago by a colleague who is close a friend of some members of the orchestra) are comparators with other similar organisations and what impact this will have on the future seasons.
I wonder what other ballet or opera companies function -- and function well -- on part-time or even outsourced bands. And I detect no suggestion in this report that the planned seasons will be reduced if this occurs. If that is the case, are we correct in assuming that the orchestra only works for the equivalent of half the year? And do they alone among individuals in professional musical groups not support themselves in addition to a full-time salary with private teaching and other performing?
I believe most opera-lovers in Scotland would like to see a longer and bigger season but small is not necessarily bad.
South Australia Opera is small, has a short season and yet has produced in the past decade or so two different Ring Cycles and a Parsifal season, as well as a number of Australian premiers -- and it utilises the wonderful State Orchestra of South Australia.
Victorian State Opera, also in Australia, a bigger company and in a state with an equivalent population to Scotland, failed financially and was forced into a takeover by the national company, Opera Australia (which comes to the Edinburgh International Festival this week), and the citizens of Victoria have felt the loss since.
Our national company survives, and long may it do so. The lack of a permanent chorus has not diminished the quality of performance. As long as national arts companies rely on major public funding, all aspects of the use of that resource must be scrutinised and in that, I fear, there is no place for emotion.
Alan Rodger,
Glasgow.
From the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator website, Scottish Opera’s income for the year ending March 2009 was £11,775,000.
With 54 musicians, assuming they earn the UK average orchestral salary (according to Musicians’ Union regional organiser Sheena MacDonald, the average salary for UK orchestral musicians is about £25,000), this equates to an annual wage bill of £1,350,000, which is only 11.5% of the annual budget. Thus Scottish Opera is aiming to save £675,000 by halving the orchestra salary bill.
Let’s look instead at some constructive ways in which, by retaining a full-time orchestra, it could be utilised to raise a significant portion of this sum.
As suggested by Graham Taylor in his letter (“Scottish Opera could do much more to make money from its in-demand orchestra”, The Herald, August 26), by staging opera galas, concert productions of opera, film nights, music from the shows and so on, the company, without the expense of having to pay an orchestra or conductor, assuming it acts quickly enough before they all leave, Scottish Opera could earn perhaps £20,000 per concert.
Five sell-out shows per year at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall could generate £100,000. Another five a year in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, with its cheaper hire costs offsetting additional transport costs, could double this. These shows could have the spin-off benefit of attracting a new audience for full-scale opera productions.
On top of this, the orchestra could bid for work with external promoters such as Raymond Gubbay, who stages about 20 concerts per year in Glasgow, but perhaps the biggest increase in revenue would arise if choral directors throughout Scotland could temporarily set aside their loyalties to their regular orchestras/fixers, and try to engage the Scottish Opera Orchestra wherever possible.
I would hope that the players in the other Scottish orchestras, and also the freelance musicians who regularly play for choral societies, would not object to any loss of supplementary income if it meant saving the jobs of the Scottish Opera Orchestra, and avoided aggravating the already fierce competition for places in our Scottish orchestras.
With, say, 50 concerts per year at £7,500 a time (if there really is as big a hole in the orchestra’s hours as claimed, which, like Graham Taylor, I’m very sceptical about), this would generate £375,000. Adding in £200,000 from 10 opera galas, would give a total only £100,000 short of the amount required to retain a full-time orchestra.
Surely a solution along these lines, with, if necessary, a little pruning of the other 88.5% of the annual budget (a £675,000 saving only equates to a 6.5% cut in the remaining budget) would offer a much less painful solution, and give Scottish Opera a much better chance of a sustainable future.
Alan Robertson,
Glasgow.
Did I attend the same play as Thom Cross (Letters, August 28), who is cross indeed at the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Alistair Beaton’s Caledonia? “A dreadful piece celebrating Scotland’s love of self harming”? I attended the last performance at this year’s Festival and had a quite different experience.
Like the schoolchildren in the audience, I remember studying the ill-fated Darien scheme but never really understood its significance, economically, socially or, indeed, psychologically, in the story of our country. Two and a half hours in the King’s Theatre did more for my understanding of this national humiliation than all those history classes.
It did not feel at all flippant but was an accessible and entertaining presentation of a doomed experiment, clear parallels with our current economic reality (hence the “Fringe like” banker jokes). It is not true that the performance descended to comic opera; there were moments of real pathos -- Paterson’s wife screwing up the list of the dead, ending with her own -- just like the crumpled bank notes falling on the audience. However much we might debate our own interpretations of what we each see in any art, there is a wider issue here.
Mr Cross has read his Brecht -- indeed, his sub-Brecht -- but seems not to have read the programme notes. The National Theatre sets out to be unconventional and aims to present exciting, entertaining and challenging work, expanding the boundaries of what theatre can achieve. Some cognoscenti have been critical of our National Theatre in these pages in recent months, as was perfidious Albion of Darien.
I write rather as a consumer who has seen everything they have produced in the past two years. I have never come away uncritical but neither have I come away feeling anything less than excited, entertained and challenged. Aims met? That can only be money well spent.
I support the endeavours and achievements of this still-young company. An encounter with the National Theatre, I confess, never leaves me feeling cross at all.
Rev Jim Lawlor,
Glasgow.
I couldn’t agree more with Frank Bechhofer’s letter (The Herald, August 30) on the criticism of the NTS. I, too, was shocked at the stinging comments previously made (Letters, August 28).
I am happy to stand up and be counted as a fan of NTS. I have seen more than a few of its productions and enjoyed them all immensely. Indeed, I am looking forward in high anticipation to the new run of Black Watch.
The comments made were, I think, unfounded and I struggle to see their basis. One poor production should not mean an end to a great artistic enterprise.
Stephen Henson,
Glasgow.
