Grumpy Old Man at the Proms

More from Special Correspondent  GOM (Grumpy Old Man)

That was the week that was. It’s over let it go” sang the wonderful Millicent Martin in TWTWTW. Would that we could say something similar about the travesty of a Proms season which has just ended. I first went to the Proms in the 1950’s when Sir Malcolm ruled the waves, so I can look back for most of the last 60 years, but actually I don’t want to go there although I have to say that the dumbed down season just ended hardly compares, in my opinion, to the glories of past Prom seasons. No, GOM wants to have a go at the audiences and the management of the Royal Albert Hall. From this I must most emphatically exclude the seasoned Prommers themselves who endure the toughest conditions, listen with extraordinary attention and are a quite wonderful audience as any orchestra or performer who plays there will tell you.

No, it is the management and ‘seated’ audience who deserve a serious douche for helping to turn a once great institution, something to be cherished, into the equivalent of ‘a bad night at the Odeon’. For a start, is it really necessary, as now happens, actively to encourage people to bring drink into the auditorium? If you order a drink at a bar in the Royal Albert Hall you will probably be asked whether you want it for immediate consumption (in which case you will be offered a glass) or whether you want it to take into the auditorium (in which case you will get it in a plastic beaker, quite possibly with ice cubes to rattle). Add to this, that one can now buy popcorn in a cardboard container ‘to take in with you’ – personally I loathe the smell of popcorn and if I am in the Tube when someone gets on with fast food, I generally go and sit in another carriage – but in the Albert Hall one has no alternative but to sit tight and grit one’s teeth whilst they rattle their popcorn and shake their ice cubes.

Then the attendants themselves. What is the point of them? At the first of the recent Vienna Philharmonic concerts which started half an hour earlier than usual, Brahms 3^rd Symphony was disrupted by hundreds, literally hundreds, of people being admitted and shown to their seats after the first and second movements. Cue extended break in proceedings and goodbye any chance of a normal cumulative concert-going experience.

And finally the ‘seated’ audience itself. Desultory clapping between each movement of a symphony aside, their behaviour frequently has to be seen (and heard) to be believed as they happily chomp through their popcorn, rattle their ice cubes, chat noisily, take photos on their mobiles (despite injunctions that no photography is allowed) and generally behave in a way that would be unacceptable in any public park on the warmest of days. For instance, at recent Proms I had two girls constantly snogging each other throughout one performance and, at another, a middle-aged pair spending the evening, he with one hand up her skirt. Between times the female of the pair asked me “When are we going to get the audience participation?” (I very nearly replied that there seemed to be plenty going on already). Poor David Attenborough seated next to us was meanwhile whacked on his knee by the person in front of him swinging vigorously on his swivel seat and then turned round to glare at someone in the box behind us eating noisily at the breathless close of the Scène aux champs.

To be perfectly frank, going to the Emirates stadium for an Arsenal game, one is now far more likely to encounter acceptable crowd behaviour any day, and actually to enjoy the experience.      

Grumpy Old Man (GOM) at the Royal Opera House

Wise words from Special Correspondent GOM (Grumpy Old Man)

Does the current fad for so-called inclusion know no bounds. Certainly the Royal Opera House’s latest wheeze defies demographics. As anybody who has been involved with marketing knows, we have an ageing population. The big audiences are those who are growing older, not the young. Yet ROH appears obstinately behind the curve, obsessed with youth and ‘inclusion’.

What is ROH’s response to this? Possibly feeling a little guilty at becoming a preserve of the super-rich (top priced seats are £165 but spend an evening eating and drinking there as well and you can probably double this), ROH’s newest marketing initiative runs contrary to any perceptible logic

My partner and I have been ‘regulars’ at ROH now for nearly 50 years, hence the above designation as ‘Grumpy Old Man’ and, if she will pardon me, in my partner’s case, ‘Slightly Ageing but Enduringly Elegant Lady’ or SAEEL (you will appreciate that I am slightly biased). Between us we have been to ROH at least 3,000 times. Now as ‘pensionists’ it remains one of our great and increasingly few pleasures in Life, especially the Royal Ballet which in our opinion is enjoying something of a Golden Age. As retirees understandably we have to count the pennies; my dear ‘Elegant Lady’ is a long term “Friend”, albeit now a Friend of the Lower Order since a hierarchy of giving has been established. Naturally we choose what we see and where we sit with some care.

In response to half a century of loyalty ROH have now seen fit to reserve some of the best seats in the Lower Slips for public booking. When ‘Enduringly Elegant Lady’ queried this with the Friends Office she was curtly informed that “the public” must have equal opportunity to book any seat. Is this all part of the obsession with ‘inclusion’? Leaving aside the simple fact that we are the public, this begs the question “what is the point of paying to be a Friend if seats which are ideal for older people like ourselves are now off-limits and reserved until the opening of public booking?”

Far from anything to do with inclusion this is all about discriminating against older people and is therefore clearly ageist. The seats involved are nearer the stage, next to a gangway and generally ideal for an older person. When we raised this question we were told to go and sit further along.  This actually makes it much harder for older people like ourselves (a) because they are in the middle of a row and therefore harder to get to, and (b) because they are angled slightly backwards and cramped up against the rail, one has constantly to lean forward in order to see the stage. So much for ‘inclusion’.

Of course with occupancy as high as it is Covent Garden can pretty much do what they like, but whatever the rhetoric, ROH is undoubtedly getting progressively less and less ‘accessible’ to the regular genuine opera or ballet-loving punter of modest means and simply becoming yet another ‘night out’, a venue to be gone to, rather than an artistic experience to be regularly enjoyed. As a lifetime supporter of the Arts I never thought I would say this but perhaps the Government through the Arts Council should review the £77 million which I believe Covent Garden currently receives and leave them to find their own financial support.

“Grumpy old Man” (GOM)