ACE cuts to its national portfolio organisations and why they matter

Arts Council England funds performance art and commissions in areas in which there is at least a partial consensus that they improve lives and lift the spirits by producing work that cannot cover its costs commercially.

Classical music is one such area. Because it often employs relatively large numbers of professional musicians, and doesn't usually entertain people on the scale of popular music, it can be costly to put on, even though the musicians who perform it are not well paid. (I'm thinking of orchestral and chamber musicians, and choruses, not stars). These musicians are not in it for the money; for them, music is a vocation. Music encourages collective listening, and the sharing of deep emotions, through abstract arrangements of notes and rhythms into complex structures, which persuade because of the powerful action of music in relation to things that are hard-wired (like response to pattern making, large-scale repetition and symbols) and thus reach places that words can't. It is a strange and yet powerful ritual. When people come face-to-face for the first time with the raw talent of musicians and singers, for example in schools, the experience can be memorable, even revelatory, life-changing and mind-blowing. Making music is not just an ideal, it is a higher experience than regular leisure transactions, like shopping.

Opera is classical music, at least as far as ACE is concerned. But it is also a multimedia genre in its combination of music, text and drama: and texts and designs of productions can carry clear and even political messages. It is valued in the UK, and gets more profile, probably because of its soft power. In other words it is a spectacular, exciting and glamorous attraction. It has, after all, been associated with power and display since it emerged as a multimedia art-form in 17th century Italy. However, with the turn inwards and parochialism of Brexit, itself a function of leadership failure and political insecurity, opera has come under pressure, as politicians hypocritically pay lip service to anti-elitism, populism and levelling up. Prior to this, serious opera companies had developed education, learning and participation strategies, often over a number of decades, and with increasing range, sophistication and imagination (e.g. Glyndebourne, ENO). So that the mission is two-fold, and sometimes in tension: to continue to be a spectacular attraction delivered by elite musicians which inspires, and to be democratic and participatory and to reach into communities.

I suspect that opera continues to need its status as a major attraction, a spectacular, in the soft power sense. This is the secret of its iconic status and why powerful people including politicians are drawn to the genre. I cannot imagine opera retaining its identity without this aura, or the bespoke theatres that are necessary for its technical support and creative development. But in response to government's populist turn, ACE has finally moved money out of London (an imbalance that had been noted for decades).  But the irony is that it has done so to a large extent by making homeless a company (ENO) that has advanced community engagement, and has a spectacular track record in commissioning and in new productions, having been born from the radical and democratic impulse to deliver English language opera. Apparently there is no serious space identified for ENO elsewhere; whereas there is demand for ROH and ENO to do complementary work in London, because it is an international cultural centre. If ENO disappears this will be a loss of cultural capital, of skills, reputation and innovation: as Melvyn Bragg says, there is an energy that comes from having a concentration of dramatic arts in one location. So the government may have neither the cake nor eat it: in other words, an attenuation of soft power spectaculars, and of serious and sustained community engagement.

Education, learning, participation and community work are essential, and this work should be amplified, as it is most likely to genuinely reach schools and communities. But so should artistic excellence and innovation. Again, I find myself agreeing with Bragg - the cake is too small, and this is especially frustrating in a country which has so many brilliant 'creatives', and yet has been led by populists who, having tanked the economy, are intent on unnecessary cultural vandalism.