Ian Bostridge looks back at how funding for classical music has fared under the Tories and wonders if this change of government could bring about a change of heart.
I’m in Norway, a music festival in Sandefjord, a former centre of the whale trade. The breakfast room is full of the bric-à-brac of this defunct industry. Call me Ishmael.
It’s in this unlikely place that, having lodged my postal vote, I will await the fall of this godforsaken government. By the time you read this, the result will be known. We in the weird world of classical music are dreaming of a new dispensation. The current—at time of writing - leader of the opposition attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as a teenager, playing piano and flute; the shadow secretary of state for culture is a former orchestral cellist; and, most significantly for me, her number two played Macheath in my university production of The Threepenny Opera.
As the government changes, the mood will change. We remember the feeling of abandonment during the Johnson administration—the crass philistinism of that Covid-era ad with the picture of a ballet dancer and the accompanying slogan “Fatima’s next job could be in cyber”... Keep reading on Prospect Magazine.
I’m in Norway, a music festival in Sandefjord, a former centre of the whale trade. The breakfast room is full of the bric-à-brac of this defunct industry. Call me Ishmael.
It’s in this unlikely place that, having lodged my postal vote, I will await the fall of this godforsaken government. By the time you read this, the result will be known. We in the weird world of classical music are dreaming of a new dispensation. The current—at time of writing - leader of the opposition attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as a teenager, playing piano and flute; the shadow secretary of state for culture is a former orchestral cellist; and, most significantly for me, her number two played Macheath in my university production of The Threepenny Opera.
As the government changes, the mood will change. We remember the feeling of abandonment during the Johnson administration—the crass philistinism of that Covid-era ad with the picture of a ballet dancer and the accompanying slogan “Fatima’s next job could be in cyber”... Keep reading on Prospect Magazine.