Independently of the supervision exercised by the Minister of Fine Arts, the strictest watch is kept over managerial doings by the Société des Auteurs, a legally constituted body which represents the authors' rights, and is alone empowered to treat in their names with theatrical managers, to collect the fees, to guard the execution of contracts and even to impose fines.
Thus is national art in France not only subsidised and patronised, but safeguarded and protected.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] It may be of interest to note that during this period no less than 543 different works, mostly by native composers, had been produced. The last opera produced under the old régime on the 3rd of August 1829 was Rossini's Guillaume Tell.
[3] During 1900 Faust was played thirty-nine times to an average house of 18,397 francs (about £730) in a repertory of twenty-five operas, and the Walküre eleven times to an average of 19,417 francs (about £777).
The English National Opera House
Three factors determine the existence of any given theatre and have to be considered with reference to my proposed National Opera House, namely, tradition, custom, and enterprise.
I have proved we possess an operatic tradition, and as regards custom no one will dispute the prevalence of a taste for opera. Indeed, from personal experience, extending over a number of years, I can vouch for a feeling akin to yearning in the great masses of the music-loving public after operatic music, even when stripped of theatrical paraphernalia, such, for example, as one gets at purely orchestral concerts. It is sufficient to follow the Queen's Hall Wagner concerts to be convinced that the flattering patronage they command is as much a tribute to the remarkably artistic performance of Mr Henry Wood, as it is due to the economy of his programmes. Again, in the provinces, I have observed, times out of number, crowded audiences listening with evident delight, not only to popular operas excellently done by the Moody-Manners' Company, but to performances of Tristan and Siegfried, which, for obvious reasons, could not give the listeners an adequate idea of the real grandeur of these works. But the love of opera is there, and so deeply rooted, that, rather than be without it, people are willing to accept what they can get.