Opera

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support opera.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure, particularly after listening to that very interesting debate on Northern Ireland, to come to a very different topic: the future of opera in this country. I tried at the time of the general election to obtain a QSD and succeeded—but the election stopped it.

This is a particularly important and significant debate. Mainstream opera—and I am talking about mainstream opera—is, in my view, one of the greatest musical art forms in the world, and it enriches our society. It encompasses orchestras, soloists and choruses, and it is spectacular, musical and dramatic. My father was a coal miner. When he was a young man, his parish priest introduced him to “Cavalleria Rusticana” on 78s. The idea that opera is somehow elitist is completely nonsensical—certainly where I come from in Wales, but also in our country as a whole. You will pay more to go to a pop concert or a football match than you will to go to an opera. The idea that it is only rich people who go to the opera needs to be scotched.

Opera is one of our greatest institutions, but it is in crisis: in serious trouble. Over the last number of years, there has been a serious reduction in productions and performances of opera. Of the four main opera companies in England and Wales, excluding Glyndebourne, three have suffered considerable contraction in the work they do. Comparing our country with others, Germany has 59 opera companies and France has 17. In other European countries there are many others. But we have only those four.

As a consequence of the cuts, to which I will refer in a moment, there has been a considerable drop in audience numbers. It is not because people do not want to go to the opera but because, throughout the whole country, there is reduced opportunity for them to do so.

Even more worrying is the situation outside London, which is now very grave: there has been a serious decline in touring opera in England and Wales. For example, the Welsh National Opera, with which I have some affinity, used to go to cities such as Liverpool, Southampton, Oxford, Birmingham and others. It still does, but, as I will explain later on, in far fewer numbers.

Mainstream opera is inevitably much more costly than other art forms. It is 10 times more costly to produce an opera than drama, for example. Since 1945, public funding has been the cornerstone of mainstream opera companies. We have the Royal Opera, Welsh National Opera, English National Opera and Opera North. The last 15 years has, as I have said, seen a serious decline in the number of productions and performances.

The cuts to opera have been terrifying. I will give your Lordships some examples. In 2012-13, there were 455 performances of opera in England and Wales; in 2023-24, there were 294. Outside London it is worse: in 2012-13, there were 195 performances and in 2023-24 just 87. Last year, we saw a 40% drop in the number of performances outside London for our people to go to outside the capital city. It is not the same for ballet, dance or drama. The result has been huge inflation costs continuing for opera companies, and they simply cannot maintain orchestras and choruses. It is a spiral of decline that is simply terrifying.

Arts Council England has made a number of seriously daft decisions over the last number of years. I will not go into how it justifies them, but the result has been there for everyone to see. Cuts have been made to the highest-cost art form, which is opera, and the only company to escape this spiral of decline—this doom loop—was the Royal Opera, largely, of course, because of the Royal Opera House income from many donors. But the other companies—English National Opera, Welsh National Opera and Opera North—have all suffered.

Your Lordships will have seen over the last number of years serious debate in the newspapers and elsewhere about what would happen if English National Opera—ENO—left London completely. I think that that has been renegotiated over the last year or so by the very effective chair of the ENO, and it has meant that it still has some integrity, but it is a reduced form. It is effectively a part-time opera with fewer performances than it traditionally had. It will operate in the north of England, but its base at the Coliseum will at least be continued.

Welsh National Opera is more seriously affected. We now have just 16 touring performances of Welsh National Opera in England and Wales, compared with 55 a decade ago. Opera North is down from 95 to 56 touring performances. Both companies operate on reduced terms, with loss of staff and opportunity. Mainstream opera outside London is now in great peril with a dispersal of singers, instrumentalists and management teams. We are faced with an enormous dilemma.

Happily, the Welsh Government are currently looking at their budget, and I am hopeful that they will give Welsh National Opera extra funding for it to continue. One of the problems that Arts Council England faced over the last year was a total lack of communication with the Arts Council of Wales, which meant that the very large cuts from Arts Council England, which gives money to Welsh National Opera because of its touring activities, were made without consultation. The combination of cuts to the Welsh and English Arts Councils meant that the WNO suffered considerably.

Opera needs, above all else, an immediate injection of cash. That is the only answer after 15 years of serious underfunding. We cannot wait until the next funding round of Arts Council England in 2027-28—that is too late. The DCMS must look seriously at the future of opera. If necessary, it must bypass the Arts Council. It would be best to work with it but to ensure that there is a continuance of opera in our country it needs this new cash injection. It happened 20 years ago with drama, and there is no reason it cannot now happen with regard to opera.

The Minister, or the Secretary of State, should meet Members of your Lordships’ House to discuss this important issue. There is a case for the DCMS to set up a special opera working group, working with the Welsh Government to ensure the future of opera. We should be looking too towards a national opera service.

The reason the Arts Council made the decisions it did some time ago was, we are told, because of levelling up. The opposite has occurred—with the complete reduction in performances and productions, it is in fact levelling down. So there is a serious need to relook at what is happening with our opera system.

Opera’s repertoire includes many of the supreme achievements of human imagination and incorporates more than all the major art forms put together. There is nothing quite like it. Unless we take this urgent action, we will wake up one morning and it will be gone.