British politicians wouldn’t be seen dead at the opera – but they need to embrace the arts if they want to stop seeming distanced and removed, says Martin Kettle.
Last Saturday I sat in something very close to rapture just a few feet away from Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel. But Merkel wasn’t making a speech. She wasn’t giving a press conference. And, although I live in hope, she wasn’t giving me an exclusive interview for the Guardian about Britain and the EU either.
Merkel was doing the same thing I was doing. She was at the opera house, listening to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. And not just in any old opera house. We were at the Bayreuth festival theatre, the legendary Wagner shrine in Bavaria. It was the opening night of the 2015 festival. Merkel was the guest of honour there, as she often is.
As I watched Merkel talking to audience members on the rope line after act one – it was said later, then emphatically denied, that she had fainted briefly during the interval – it struck me, not for the first time, that this was the sort of event at which no British political leader would appear comparably at ease. It’s not just that there aren’t many Wagner lovers in the British political class. It’s more that whenever British politicians see the word “culture”, they make their excuses and leave... Keep reading on The Guardian
Last Saturday I sat in something very close to rapture just a few feet away from Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel. But Merkel wasn’t making a speech. She wasn’t giving a press conference. And, although I live in hope, she wasn’t giving me an exclusive interview for the Guardian about Britain and the EU either.
Merkel was doing the same thing I was doing. She was at the opera house, listening to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. And not just in any old opera house. We were at the Bayreuth festival theatre, the legendary Wagner shrine in Bavaria. It was the opening night of the 2015 festival. Merkel was the guest of honour there, as she often is.
As I watched Merkel talking to audience members on the rope line after act one – it was said later, then emphatically denied, that she had fainted briefly during the interval – it struck me, not for the first time, that this was the sort of event at which no British political leader would appear comparably at ease. It’s not just that there aren’t many Wagner lovers in the British political class. It’s more that whenever British politicians see the word “culture”, they make their excuses and leave... Keep reading on The Guardian