Poverty of aspiration is a big problem when it comes to the eternally thorny issue of getting different taxpayers to go to the opera, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research. It has looked into the Royal Opera House's Travelex £10 ticket "bonanza" and concluded that all cut-price opera does is encourage the same people to turn up, only with more enthusiasm. And the sponsor gets a nice name-check.
Ian Kearns, associate director of the IPPR, has said that "the arts need to do far more than offer a limited number of cheap tickets on a first come, first served basis". It's those middle-class culture vultures who ruin it. Offer a sniff of a Travelex bargain and they're charging down Floral Street, elbows out, before you can say, "Anyone for The Bartered Bride?" Just as private schools have at long last recognised the PR own-goal of awarding bursaries to well-off pupils, Kearns has rather burst Covent Garden's bubble by pointing out that there is no great thing about being generous to people who could, and probably would, pay top whack if they had to.
If the publicly subsidised Royal Opera, which has a national remit, wants to ensure greater access, says the IPPR, it should simply give the tickets away free. And then only to specifically targeted community groups in deprived areas. Furthermore, it should "arrange trips for lower socio-economic groups outside of London". It's no good offering cheap tickets if people have to trek in from somewhere requiring a £50 train ticket and an overnight stay in the capital.
It's interesting that the IPPR did not extend its scepticism to the National Theatre, which is now into its second Travelex "tickets for a tenner" season. The first one was a roaring success and did bring a different crowd to the South Bank. But the theatre is more accessible than opera: plays tend to be in English, don't require a knowledge of 17th-century chamber music, and pull in the crowds with major celebrities. Who would have braved the four-hour The Iceman Cometh if not for Kevin Spacey?
Meanwhile, in the commercial West End, theatre producers realised a long time ago that the only way to ensure the run of a gargantuan musical was to bus people in from the sticks and reward those who came along for the ride. There are offices all along Shaftesbury Avenue devoted to arranging group tours for people who may or may not be from "lower socio-economic groups" but do not, it is fair to say, come just from the wealthy Guildford substratum. These audiences enjoy hefty discounts, timetables like clockwork and the kind of atmosphere you might find at, say, the cinema but never at Covent Garden - unless it's The Nutcracker at Christmas with Wayne Sleep fresh out of the Australian jungle.
All this might have been playing on Raymond Gubbay's mind last week, as he stood outside the Savoy Theatre before the premiere of his Marriage of Figaro. Perhaps hoping to beat the Royal Opera to the Accessibility Crown, Gubbay had decreed that his first night be free to all. Which was lovely, except that you felt most people at the "People's Opera" were already extremely familiar with Mozart's divine comedy. The man sitting on my right was so au fait with it that he air-conducted all the way through the fourth act. Which was very annoying, and not just for Gubbay.
