All In Good Company
The Age
Saturday February 11, 1995
Business and pleasure are a difficult mix fir The Victoria State Opera, writes Jim Davidson.
THESE days it is fashionable to talk about the arts industry, and yes, the Victoria State Opera is run from a building that looks like a bank. But then opera, perhaps the most complex of art forms, has traditionally always sidled up to government and big money. Until the music theatre revolution which might be written about in future textbooks rather like the reforms of Gluck it hasn't generally been thought possible to do it any other way.
Viewed as a business, the VSO is impressive: the operas involve an operating budget of $10 million a year, and necessitate a permanent staff of 50 people as administrators, in the music and wardrobe departments, and so on. When the two short seasons are running, both in the second half of the year, singers and musicians swell the numbers further. Opera is a labor-intensive industry: 80 per cent of the company's income goes out in salaries and wages.
It might read like a success story now, for the company has trebled its total income since moving into the State Theatre in 1984. But whereas the box office has also trebled, from just under $1.4 million in 1984 to $4.5million, government subsidy has remained almost static.
Richard Divall, for more than 20 years the company's music director, pulls no punches here. He speaks of ``personal bias" evident in the Australia Council, which has refused to subsidise the VSO or any of the state companies since unlike the ``national" Australian Opera they are regional organisations. Divall also hints at there having been opposition to the company from unexpected quarters in Melbourne.
Near-frozen state support, with almost none from the Commonwealth has meant, as Divall puts it, a ``starving of the company to death".
Ken Mackenzie-Forbes, the general manager, points to the fact that government subsidy of the VSO, 12 per cent in 1993, is by far the lowest of any opera company in Australia. In South Australia and Western Australia Government grants amount to just over half of their opera companies' income; for the Australian Opera they come to 38 per cent.
The consequence, says Divall, is that a policy of survivalism has been adopted. ``We could either be daring and go out," he says, ``or battle on as best we could." This did mean, though, some conservatisation of the repertory, even if there has been a leavening with whizz-bang productions. Mackenzie-Forbes refers to a needless ``ongoing agony over funding", and says that the VSO needs 20 per cent funding to function properly and to be able to take risks without imperilling its existence.
He's right; opera has not been popular for so very long in Australia, and the audience is still being educated. In London there are certain works seen once a generation, others once every 10 years, and then the bulk of the repertoire put on in varying circuits of frequency. A number of works in this last group have never been staged here at all.
It is not always easy to determine what the audience will take to, a vital consideration for the VSO, since it must budget for 80 per cent paid attendance. (Last year it managed 85 per cent.) In 1992 the company mounted an enterprising season characterised by major works slightly to one side of the mainstream. Solidity was spiked with adventurousness; none of these operas could be considered a reckless choice. But the season did poorly at the box office, so that a sense of venture did not return to the lists until the announcement of the operas for 1995.
Despite their origin in expediency, musicals have become an integral part of VSO strategy. ``There are bigger audiences for musicals than there is for anything else in the theatre," says Mackenzie-Forbes; it is time Australia produced more of its own, on a regular basis.
These could even be exported, reversing the current trend. The VSO has plans to produce its first premiere of an Australian musical later in the year.
Meanwhile, the VSO has created a commercial division, and, following the lead of the Australian Opera, intends to market videos and recordings.
It has also engaged in an export drive. West Side Story opens in Sydney late in February; after that, the VSO will take it to Brisbane and South-East Asia, and hopes eventually to take it to America. VSO productions are on loan to companies in Adelaide and Auckland.
``With the theatres for opera being so large now," says Mackenzie- Forbes, ``and the appetite for opera so great", the idea of cutting costs by mounting joint productions has become more attractive. The VS0 has been doing this within Australia for quite some time; in 1995 Massenet's Don Quixote comes as a joint production with the English National Opera.
These various endeavors seemed to have impressed the private sector more than it has government. Private sector support which comes from a core of individuals as well as from corporations has increased tenfold since 1984, and at $1.5 million is now larger than the annual subsidy.
The VSO is none the less highly conscious of the link the State Government wishes to develop between the arts and tourism. ``Melbourne has facilities for the performing arts, which are as good as, if not better, than any other city in the world," Mackenzie-Forbes believes.
``The problem is that not enough money is being allocated to develop the product to go into these facilities." Melbourne needs to promote itself as ``entertainment city". People will come, he says, once they are sure they will catch a good show here any night of the year just as many make a ritual pilgrimage to Covent Garden or La Scala.
To do that, though, there will have to be some refocusing of the image. Mackenzie-Forbes tells the story that when in Sydney, Placido Domingo did not realise that the Victoria State Opera was located in Melbourne. ``We would like it to be the Melbourne Opera in the Melbourne Opera House," he says. This could be particularly important internationally, as a signifier.
``Jumbo jetloads of Indonesians go off to see The Ring at the Met in New York. It's madness they're not coming here instead of crossing the world."
So the Ring is on hold, as is the matter of Divall's replacement. He is to remain principal guest conductor, but the idea at the moment is perhaps not to appoint a new music director. This, the reader will be interested to learn, is the fashion now among opera companies. Partly this is because opera is now seen in a less exclusively musical way; Mackenzie-Forbes talks about the possibility of Divall's successor being a theatre director. But partly, too, one suspects, this development draws strength from rampant managerialism. Too much expertise is suspect nowadays, since it draws its authority from other values; the idea seems to be that anybody trained in management can run anything.
Divall who oscillates in conversation between ``we" and ``they" when talking of the VSO sees the future of the company as being ``enormously bright". It still tends to conservatism in its repertoire, he says, and has not yet been able to build up a permanent chorus or find enough subsidiary engagements to support singers.
Meanwhile Divall's own career continues: he has a number of overseas engagements lined up, including conducting the English National Opera's revival of Don Quixote.
At long last subsidy prospects are improving. While there are no immediate prospects of a direct increase in the State Government grant, Haddon Storey is prepared to consider one should the Arts Ministry's allocation be increased as state finances improve.
And under the Commonwealth Government's Creative Nation scheme, funds are being made available to encourage joint productions, an area where the VSO has already been well to the fore.
© 1995 The Age