Canada's Artistic Boom II

Honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen: This is the second visit of Celia Franca' to our club, the first having been in February, 1959. It surely must be the first, out of the many thousands of encores she has received during her career that comes a quarter of a century after her original appearance! The explanation, of course, is that she has not exactly been waiting idly in the wings during the interim.

When I watch her vibrant enthusiasm and vivacity, I cannot believe that twenty-five years has elapsed since her last appearance. On the other hand, when I consider what she has accomplished for Canada's artistic life in the interim, I find it incredible she could have done this in less than a century!

Miss Franca arrived in Canada in February 1951, having been enticed here by a group of Toronto

'In October, 1985, Miss Franca was invested as Companion of the Order of Canada. balletomanes determined to found a good ballet company in Canada. They had all witnessed Miss Franca's work with the Sadler's Wells Company, in which she had become, in the words of the director: "The finest dramatic dancer the world has ever seen." In her first year in Canada, while supporting herself as a file clerk, she recruited and trained dancers, staged some promenade concerts, organized a summer school, and gathered an elite artistic staff, including Betty Oliphant, George Crum and Kay Ambrose. The newlyformed Canadian National Ballet made its debut in November of that first year, at Eaton Auditorium. A year later, the company was touring Canada; and in 1953, it toured the United States.

Can a country adequately honour anyone who has made such a great contribution to its artistic life? I doubt it, but Canada has tried. No fewer than eight Canadian universities have bestowed honorary doctorates on Miss Franca; she has received a Woman of the Year award, the Civic Award of Merit from Toronto, and a newspaper award "for the most outstanding contribution to the Arts in Canada." She is an Officer of the Order of Canada and has a Centennial Medal.

Miss Franca, when you spoke to us in 1959, you gave us a brilliant, penetrating, and perhaps generous analysis of the assets and liabilities of the arts in Canada - as of that time. We await your encore.

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Celia Franca.

Celia Franca

Madam Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: You have kindly invited me to speak to you again, an honour I deeply appreciate. When I last addressed the Empire Club in 1959 we were just seeing the first fruits of the development of dance in Canada and the National Ballet in particular. The company had made a place for itself in Toronto and across Canada and gained a reputation for professional production abroad in the United States and Mexico. A few years of evolvement had given us a chance to show the country what Canadian artists could do and the country found it good.

Seven months after the February address the National Ballet School was founded under the leadership of Miss Betty Oliphant, a bold step intended to give talented young Canadians access to the world's stages by offering for the first time in North America a complete educational system centred on dance. Within a few years the school was providing a steady flow of trained talent to Canadian and foreign dance companies, and took its place as one of the leading centres of dance education in the world.

In the twenty-four years between 1959 and 1984 the arts in Canada have been transformed. The growth of art galleries, museums, theatres, concert halls, orchestras, writing, has been an explosion of creative talent and public response. All levels of government - federal, provincial, and municipal now have programs in the arts. The number of creative artists in all fields has multiplied a hundredfold. Most private corporations have as part of their structure an office and a budget taking special interest in the arts. Firms send their officers to conferences and seminars to study how the businessman and the artist can better work together for the enrichment of community life.

To celebrate its 150th anniversary Toronto mounted a dazzling Festival embracing the full range of music and theatre from amateur talent to some of the greatest international companies. The arts in Toronto and across the country have become a resource which Canadians recognize as having national importance. This accomplishment is the result of the fruitful combination of the artist who creates the art, and the "amateur" who loves it: individuals, corporations, foundations, government work together to find audiences and the funds to give expression to our creative talent.

We have come through a period of trial. The strength of our commitment to the arts has been sorely tried by the serious financial problems of the past few years. Economic recession with its accompanying unemployment, fiscal restraint, and a host of pressing problems has placed enormous pressure on the arts community. (Indeed, dancers' salaries are still pathetically inadequate despite the efforts of unions, fund-raisers and volunteers.) When hospitals must be closed, universities curtailed, and welfare budgets soar, there is a great temptation to pare "frills", and to some eyes the most visible "frill" is the opera, or the ballet, the theatre, the art gallery, this whole range of "unnecessary" services we call "art".

... our commitment to the arts has been sorely tried ...

It is a satisfaction to me and I hope to everyone here that by and large we have resisted that temptation; Roy Thomson Hall was opened at the bottom of the worst recession since the Second World War. (History has of course shown us-witness Great Britain's cultural boom during that war - that people need the arts most urgently in tough times.) Despite constraint its seats are filled day in and day out for the finest in what was once called "long-hair music". The hair may still be long but the Hall can frequently boast capacity attendance by the great public of this city - and the music which is performed there can truly be called popular. Yet there is more to the story of Roy Thomson Hall: not only has it provided a setting for great music, but it is also a generator of economic activity - money for musicians, jobs for the network of technicians and promoters, revenue for a host of small businesses, printers, taxi drivers, restaurants, and it is another great attraction for tourists visiting Toronto.

This combination of artistic and economic pay-off is a demonstration of what is possible - it is exciting, it is beautiful and it pays. And there are many other examples of such pay-off, whether we think of the effect of a large organization like the Stratford Festival or the tiny Blythe Theatre in a little town north of London the story is similar; prudent investment in the arts pays off for the whole community.

... business investment is a gamble-so is theatre - so is ballet ...

Now when I use the words "prudent investment" I must make clear what I mean or perhaps I should start by saying what I do not mean. I do not need to remind this audience that business invesment is a gamble - so is theatre - so is ballet - and prudent investment does not mean not taking risks. Where there are risks there will be failures. For example, under the leadership of Robin Phillips, undoubtedly one of the world's great drama directors, Theatre London embarked last year on a challenging program of plays. The performances were excellent and received critical acclaim but the box office was disastrous. The good side to that story is the sequel: rather than throwing in the towel, board members of Theatre London are reorganizing their approach, and setting out to rebuild their audience. I am confident they will succeed.

Prudent investment, then, requires a combination of judgement and luck. In ballet, the field I know best, judgement is required to bring together several key factors; the director must constantly seek ways of developing the art - both dancer and customer soon tire of the same old thing done in the same old way. The great classics such as "Swan Lake" or "Sleeping Beauty" must be interpreted afresh for each new generation of theatre goers. The director is also ever on the search for new ballets - the coming choreographer who shows promise, who can challenge us, enrich our enjoyment and understanding of who we are. And in the reckoning the director is constantly seeking to present honest art in an exciting way, for the theatre public is fickle, and very quick to spot the phony. Good stuff well presented, with judgement and luck, fills houses.

When I speak of houses, ladies and gentlemen, now I am talking about where you come in. You have in the National Ballet one of the few great classical companies in the world and their home is Toronto. Yet after over thirty years of world-recognized achievement this is the only such company that has no home. The Bolshoi Ballet has the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow; the Royal Danish Ballet has the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen; the Royal Ballet has the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Our National Ballet existed eighteen years before acquiring permanent rehearsal and office space at the St. Lawrence Hall - space it has outgrown. The ballet needs a permanent theatre designed for the best possible presentation of the art and the greatest possible enjoyment by the audience. The hiring of the O'Keefe Centre for a few weeks of the year is not good enough now and has not been good enough for many years. I have here a clipping from the Toronto Star dated Tuesday, April 5, 1966. The heading reads "Miss Franca seeks opera house". Please bear with me - I cannot resist quoting a few sentences from the article:

Not a brick is yet in place at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts - but already a campaign is being launched for something new. Celia Franca, artistic director of the National Ballet, last night announced that she wants a $16 million opera house.

The 2,000-seat opera house would be shared by the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet. Both now use the O'Keefe Centre. Miss Franca doesn't expect to win her opera house for 10 or 15 years. She is starting now because years of talk are needed before the public will accept the project.

Our dancers, musicians, directors and designers have accomplished miracles working against incredible odds - they have no theatre in which necessary weeks of rehearsal can be used to polish all the elements of dance in preparation for that opening night. After choreographing in the dance studio no more than three feet away from the dancers the choreographer deserves the right to sit back in a theatre and take time to view his or her work from a distance and then to take more time for adjustments; designers of costumes, scenery and lighting and musicians and conductors and dancers - all need to work and "live" in and become familiar with their own HOME - a home which is designed to present great art to a deserving public.

Toronto balletomanes who saw the Bolshoi Ballet's first performance of "Giselle" at Maple Leaf Gardens will remember the great ballerina Galina Ulanova. I will never forget her exquisite bourree en arriere - the floating quality of her run backwards on her pointes - and the shock when for lack of stage depth she hit the scenery against the back wall and fell. Later, she graciously visited the National Ballet at the St. Lawrence Hall. Not surprisingly she said "You must get your own theatre".

Last June many Ottawans attended beautifully presented performances of the Hamburg Ballet at the opera stage of the National Arts Centre. What a pity Torontonians and visitors to the Festival could not enjoy the same quality of performance when the German company played here!

Now I know that money is tight. And I realize that an opera house is pricey. Yet I urge you to think in terms of investment: an opera house will be an enormous generator both for the arts of ballet and opera and for the economy. It is also necessary for Toronto to live up to its promise of being one of the great centres of the performing arts in the world.

Madam Chairman, the word challenge has a thrilling ring to it. The late Herman Geiger-Torel was, I am sure, thrilled to take up the challenge of building the Canadian Opera Company. I have often been asked why I and my supporters went through the agonies of developing the National Ballet. The answer of course is - the excitement of the challenge. Our successors, Lotfi Mansouri and Erik Bruhn, are marvellously talented men of vision. Let us now help them reach a new plateau of excellence by accepting the challenge of building them an opera house par excellence - a place to stand - a house which will be S R O - sold right out - standing room only.

The appreciation of the audience was expressed by John MacNaughton, a Past President of the Club.