But this, I fear, is not enough. The genuinely unfortunate aspect of the overall situation is that we are so pitifully unable to supply an outlet for our own extraordinary talent. For example, at an audition I attended in Milan, out of the twenty-eight singers heard, sixteen of them were Americans. This is but further evidence that our American talent is still forced to go to Europe to expand, to develop, and to exhibit their talents; in short, to get a hearing.
In Italy today, with a population of approximately 48,000,000, there are now some seventy-two full-fledged opera companies.
In pre-war Germany with an approximate population of 70,000,000, there were one hundred forty-two opera houses, all either municipally or nationally subsidized.
Any plan for government subsidy of the arts must be a carefully thought out and extensive one. It should start with a roof, beginning slowly and expanding gradually, until, from beneath that roof-tree, companies and organizations would deploy throughout the entire country and, eventually, the world. Eventually, in addition to ballet, music, opera, and theatre, it should embrace all the creative arts. Education in the arts must be included in the subsidization, so that the teacher, the instructor, the professor may be regarded as equal in importance to doctors, lawyers, engineers, and politicians, instead of being regarded as failures, as they so often regrettably are.
Until the unborn tomorrow dawns when we can find leaders whose understanding of these things is not drowned out by the thunder of material prosperity and the noise of jostling humanity, leaders with the vision and the foresight to see the benefit to the country and the world from this kind of thing, and who, in addition to understanding and knowing these things, possess the necessary courage and the indispensable stamina to see things through, we shall have to continue to fight the fight, to grasp any friendly hand, and, I fear, continue to watch the sorry spectacle of the arts squatting in the market-place, basket in lap, begging for alms for beauty.
So long as I am spared, I shall never cease to present the best in all the arts, so that the great public may have them to enjoy and cherish; so that the artists may be helped to attain some degree of that security they so richly deserve, against that day when an enlightened nation can provide them a home and the security that goes with it.
With all those who are of it, and all those whose lives are made a little less onerous, a little more tolerable, to whom it brings glimpses of a brighter unborn tomorrow, I repeat my united hurrah: Three Cheers for Good Ballet!
INDEX
[A], [B], [C], [D], [E], [F], [G], [H], [I], [J], [K], [L], [M], [N], [O], [P], [Q], [R], [S], [T], [U], [V], [W], [Y], [Z]