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7-10-02
More
Fart than Art
..... or How I learned to say "Fuck The Opera"
In today's tedious
S.M.H. column, enternal whinging feminist and culturati Anne Summers
joins the ranks of very silly people who demand we spend even more millions
of taxpayers' money on arts funding.
'Tis
suits, not genius, that strut the stage
Artists such as Simone Young create something priceless, yet it's profiteers
that are idolised, writes Anne Summers.
Having a howling error
in the first line of a column is never a good sign. It's obviously escaped
the attention of Summers and other culturati dingbats that big-money executives
have rather a bad image in Australia right now. Hello Anne, heard of OneTel
& HIH?
What
kind of country are we that our largest companies can find more than
$50 million to throw at past-their-use-by-date departing CEOs, yet we
are unable to dredge up a mere $2 million to hang onto the internationally
renowned music director of our national opera company?
A country where there
are some very stupid people in corporate life who are willing to spend
big money on bad CEOs. Welcome to the world of freedom of choice and private
enterprise. Then again, none of us is forced to pay for those pricks,
whereas we can do nothing about the millions of our tax payments that
fund your middle-class cultural welfare.
The
sacking of Simone Young by the board of Opera Australia last month highlights
an alarming trend in Australia to financially reward mediocrity or incompetence
in the corporate world but to punish striving for excellence in the
performing arts.
Punish? She was being
paid with my fucking money!!! Who the hell asked our permission to shell
out our money to subsidise the entertainment of the Opera crowd?
The
decision of the OA board not to renew Young's contract was, according
to board chairman Rowena Danziger, financially motivated "by a
need to ensure the national opera company's sustainable development".
Specifically, it has been reported, Young's artistic plans for the 2004
season exceeded the budget by $2 million.
The
person whose hiring just three years ago was hailed as such a coup for
OA, and whose musical vision promised to elevate our opera to new standards
of excellence, was let go for want of a couple of million dollars.
A couple of
million dollars over and above the millions of dollars
of our money that is already being used to keep this unpopular
art form afloat.
It
was not the artistic vision as such that was at issue - Young delivered
what she had promised in terms of improving the orchestra and expanding
the repertoire - it was just that the OA could not afford it. Nor was
Young's own remuneration an issue. She just wanted to produce a fabulous
season.
A "fabulous season"
which is so popular with the public that it cannot survive on its own
financially. That's some vital art form you got there.
Of course, the likes
of Summers and other art-industry bludgers like Leo Schofield never suggest
the easiest and most obvious solution: that the opera audience should
pay for it themselves. You know, like people who like (gulp) rock and
roll. Ah, but that's not culturally important is it?
[...a whole paragraph
of examples over overpaid execs follows. Zzzz...]
These
financial excesses point to a shameless self-aggrandisement among our
corporate elite. They take home salaries, bonuses, interest-free loans
and all kinds of other perks that are unjustifiable on any terms.
What, so companies
shouldn't be allowed to offer their money and perks to attract
talent, and improve performance, but useless individuals like Simone Young
can take my money to fund her art form whether I'm interested in it or
not? The art-left love using everyone else's money to fund their interests.
In
Europe and the United States, opera companies attract significant donations
from bizoids anxious to improve their cultural cred. Not so here. It
is almost impossible to get our wealthiest individuals to give money
to the arts (unless it's to buy stuff to increase in value while it
hangs on their walls). They support medical charities, up to a point,
but overall we lack a philanthropic tradition. And while we expect governments
to subsidise everything from sports training to the price of pharmaceuticals,
we are far less demanding of our financial elite.
Ah, here's the rub:
the evil capitalists aren't giving enough of their money to the beloved
Opera, so they should be forced to.
Yet
if as a society we want the performances at the Sydney Opera House to
match the bravura of the building - and we claim we do - we need to
find the funds to do it.
How about fucking
paying for it yourself!!!! And this society of ours clearly doesn't
want it: if the audience was there to support it, you wouldn't need our
fucking money to prop it up, you dopey asscow.
The
board of OA has a clear duty to be fiscally responsible, but it has
an equally important mandate to nurture excellence in the company. Its
mission statement includes the undertaking: to "attract, develop,
challenge and retain people of the highest calibre within an organisation
that is effectively led, well-informed and in which their contribution
is respected and celebrated".
The
Young episode represents a failure to meet just about every one of these
goals.
Oh, heaven forfend!!
The poor opera crowd, already bloated with millions of dollars of taxpayers'
money, expresses outrage that the board of Opera Australia would actually
exercise some restraint in spending money it doesn't have on an artform
hardly anyone wants.
Equally
disturbing are the unattributed comments in the media by board members
and other "sources" that the board's decision was about more
than money. Opera CEO Adrian Collette wrote to the company's supporters
recently stating that "out of respect for Simone and our company"
no further comments would be made about the episode. However, this has
not stopped some insiders from briefing some journalists (not this one)
that Young was "abrasive" and "autocratic". (Isn't
criticising a conductor for being autocratic a bit like attacking a
social worker for being compassionate?) Someone else complained about
Young's "brinkmanship". She went to the wall to fight for
her vision, apparently. That's what artistic directors are supposed
to do - yet it cost her her job.
Oh, the poor dear.
She demands to go a piffling two million dollars over budget, paid
for by people like me, and she loses her job for it. Well boo-hoo.
An
especially damaging comment was made to this newspaper the day of her
termination: "Her vision was going to cost a bundle and she had
to bring something to the party, but this wasn't happening." I
would have thought she brought her name, her reputation, her musical
vision and her skills.
And how about an ability
to recoup the fucking costs?
In
the same vein, critics of the board's decision have been trashed by
OA management. People who wrote critical letters to the press had their
names run through the OA data base. Less than 10 per cent of them had
bought tickets in the past seven years, said Liz Nield , the company's
marketing and communications director.
As
if members of the public are not entitled to comment on decisions of
an arts organisation that receives substantial taxpayer funds. This
exercise reveals a level of petty vindictiveness that is, sadly, all
too typical of arts management in this country.
Strange that she uses
a dozen or so letters from the "public" the prove her point,
yet is unwilling to admit to herself that the vast majority of the public
has no interest whatsoever in financially supporting the opera by paying
a fair ticket price. I guess the culturally unwashed amongst us shouldn't
be able to decide how to spend our money.
Young's
leaving is not just a reprise of the departures of other talented and
demanding artists whose vision was deemed to be "unsustainable"
by their managements - think Meryl Tankard, Maina Geilgud, Barrie Kosky
- it also has depressing parallels with the history of the very building
in which Young worked.
A whole roll-call
of people who produced monumentally boring art nobody gave a shit about
or wanted to spend money on. Good fucking riddance.
In
1966, the NSW government failed to retain the services of the architect
Joern Utzon, whose bold and brave design for an opera house had been
commissioned by the previous regime. In 2002, a new opera board has
sent packing the brilliant and visionary musician recruited by its predecessor
a mere three years ago.
The
problem for the future is that it will be next to impossible to recruit
a stellar replacement for Young. Who in their right mind would take
a job that is now internationally branded as being, artistically speaking,
for the vision-impaired?
Hopefully, the answer
is "nobody". You want them here? Pay a fair ticket price for
the shows you attend.
When us rock n' roll
fans want to get U2 out here, we support promoters by paying big-ass money
for our tickets. Why don't you do the same for your damned opera tickets?
Why should your upper-class twat-art be supported with our money?
I wouldn't be as pissed
off with the likes of Summers if they were are least consistent about
it: they should bloody well spread the arts funding around to help fund
fund big rock tours and give us cheaper movie tickets. These things, of
course, are nothing but coarse, low-rent cultural pollution, whereas you
guys are artistic and cultural, right?
Maybe
the board should rethink - and perhaps put the wood on some of those
overpaid corporates to fork out some of those millions to keep Young
at the helm of our national opera. Perhaps one or more of them might
volunteer.
Lowy
has said he intends to donate his $11.9 million salary to charity. Frank,
here's an idea: donate it to Opera Australia and ask them to renew Young's
contract. With almost $12 million in the coffers they could more than
afford her next three seasons and Australia would not lose another stellar
artist to more generous overseas pastures.
Anne, here's an idea:
maybe he could give the $12 million to such horrid, culturally irrelevant
endeavours like the Smith
Family, the Red Cross, the
Royal Flying Doctor Service or the
Hollows Foundation. (Ah, but
where's the culture?)
Piss off and use your
own money for a change.
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