At least the BBC can get one thing right (From The Oxford Times)

At least the BBC can get one thing right

3:39pm Wednesday 21st July 2010 in

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The first thing Gwyneth Williams should do in her new role as Controller of BBC Radio 4 is ask why details of her appointment took precedence on the station’s flagship 6pm news last Thursday over the death of the great conductor Sir Charles Mackerras.

It is utterly typical of the BBC, with its inflated sense of its own importance, that it gave such prominence to a report that deserved to be no more than a footnote in the bulletin (which is what it was, of course, in the next day’s newspapers — those that bothered to mention it at all).

By contrast, Sir Charles’s death was the main item on Classic FM’s evening news, though I grant this station has a different listenership.

But one can forgive the Beeb most things in a week that has seen the start — and a sensational start — to the 2010 BBC Proms. (I emphatically will not excuse, however, its having permitted the deputy director general Mark Byford to build up a £400,000 a year pension, or its decision to send 274 staff and freelances — what fun for them all! — to cover “Glasto”, as this grisly event is always called by the ageing trendies who attend it. I see no reports, though, of Mr Byford freeloading his way among them as he did last year when the corporation had more than 400 people there, including, very strangely, the chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons.)

Two outstanding opera performances dominated the first weekend of the Proms. On Sunday night, Radio 3 offered the opportunity to hear from the Royal Albert Hall the Royal Opera’s new production of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, in which Placido Domingo, now 69, makes his debut as a baritone.

The night before, Welsh National Opera was at the same venue delighting the Promenaders (and many thousands more tuned in at home) with its glorious new production (unstaged here, of course) of Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, starring Bryn Terfel (pictured) in the role of Hans Sachs.

WNO has reason to feel especially saddened by Sir Charles’s death. Its company statement said: “Sir Charles conducted many great performances for WNO, his first was in 1950, and he was our Musical Director from 1987 until 1992. [He] remained closely connected to the company and held the title of Conductor Emeritus. [He] conducted acclaimed concert performances of Mitridate, re di Ponto last summer. Sir Charles will be deeply missed.”

Since Oxford has long been on WNO’s touring schedule, he was a familiar, often-smiling figure on the podium at the New Theatre — more on public view there than at many opera venues because of its lack of a pit.

A cherished memory for me, as I am sure for many others, is his visit to the city on March 22, 1990, to conduct Mozart’s Così fan Tutte. It was in this production that the baby-faced Mr Terfel made his operatic debut in the role of Guglielmo. My review alluded to his comic skills, which have since been seen to great effect in, for instance, Falstaff and, indeed, in parts of Die Meistersinger. Sir Charles, too, was no stranger to comedy, and a noted exponent of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, as obituarists noted. Oxford saw a notable Yeomen of the Guard, with him in charge, in 1995.

Old programmes pulled from my bookshelves also remind me of two of his visits with Mozart’s Idomeneo — in 1991 and again four years later — the same favourite composer’s La clemenza di Tito in 1997 and a production of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride in 1992 with Diana Montague and Simon Keenlyside (as Oreste).

But these are overshadowed by the memory of 1993’s superb production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, with Jeffrey Lawton and Anne Evans.

Truly he was a maestro.