Brass bands accuse arts council of ‘snobbery’ over opera funding

Opera has a new fight on its hands. A fresh and feisty adversary has stepped out from the wings, in the footsteps of Timothée Chalamet and the former boss of the English National Opera, John Berry, who in recent weeks have each questioned the relevance of the operatic repertoire.

The latest battering comes from England’s brass band community, who have come out trumpets blaring. Yes, they are brassed off. A reply to a parliamentary question from the Conservative MP Esther McVey revealed that from 2022 to 2025, the government and public bodies spent a total of £226 million on opera through Arts Council grants, while £31.5 million of funding went to brass bands.

McVey, the MP for Tatton, said this funding gap exposes a “southern and metropolitan bias” and what amounts to “snobbishness”. Her view was backed on Wednesday by Sarah Baumann from Brass Bands England, who is now calling for a fairer use of taxpayers’ money. Brass bands are not just a minority interest confined to Yorkshire, she claims.

As if to amplify the argument, the Durham Brass Festival announced its 20th anniversary line-up on the same day. Durham County Council runs this week-long jamboree in July with help from Arts Council England funding. The year’s grand finale will be a performance from the famous Grimethorpe Colliery Band, featured in the UK film Brassed Off. Released 30 years ago, it's still a popular favourite for what it says about the power of music in a community facing deprivation.

Opera, though, is clearly not identified with deprivation, despite cheap ticket schemes and its origins as a popular form of entertainment. It is also still recovering from recent broadsides delivered from within the arts world.

A fortnight ago, Berry, who was artistic director of the ENO for a decade, urged contemporary playwrights to breathe new life into the operatic tradition, which is known properly as “lyric theatre”. He suggested that Adolescence’s Jack Thorne should have a go at a libretto, and he later also mentioned writers Lucy Prebble and James Graham as likely candidates. The problem, as Berry sees it, is that: “Sometimes one sits through an opera with a wonderful score but the story is unintelligible.”

The recent focus on opera’s failings began, we know, with casual comments made by Chalamet at an event in Texas at the end of February. The star said he didn’t want to work in an art form that needed preservation, like ballet or opera, where practitioners think, “Hey, keep this thing alive, even though, like, no one cares about this anymore.”

The actor’s words prompted a joke at Chalamet's expense from Conan O’Brien at the Oscars and the acclaimed Mexican conductor Alondra de Parra also called him out on Instagram, putting her baton to one side before a concert to say to camera: “Hey Timothée, I’m sorry you don’t wanna be a part of this. Maybe you want to reconsider? And we’re not trying to keep it alive. It is pretty much alive!”

But, as brass band spokeswoman Baumann pointed out this week, there are no simple divisions in music. Brass bands can be a "pipeline", she said, for musicians who end up working in opera houses. Good art will never stay neatly in one box, whether it is Berry’s new production, The Galloping Cure, made with Scottish Opera and all about the opioid crisis, or whether it is the opening performance at the Durham Festival, which is a blend of the grunge rock band Nirvana’s back catalogue and Elvis Presley tunes, courtesy of a brass band called Elvana.

We only need to think back to key scenes in the film Brassed Off to see how silly it is to pit one genre against another. The fictional brass band members at the centre of the plot famously love to play Rogrigo’s classical hit Concierto d'Aranjuez (or “Orange Juice”) and demonstrate that good live music defies both snobbery and inverted snobbery, whatever the wider cultural trappings.

Photograph by AJ Pics / Alamy