When the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, announced on January 13th that he was establishing a committee to study the feasibility of setting up a centre for the performing arts, it was a case of cheers all round in classical-music circles.
However, four weeks later, nothing further has happened and a committee has yet to be appointed. It's thanks to the work of Dr John O'Conor, Ireland's leading pianist and director of the Royal Irish Academy of Music, that the project to establish a performing-arts centre has got finally got on to the State's agenda. According to O'Conor, Ireland is one of the few western countries lacking such a centre. Unless we have an institution which can offer a range of performing-arts activities to degree level, we will continue to remain marginalised in musical terms, he says.
A major change over the last decade or so, he observes, is that conductors rather than agents now dominate the classical music scene. "Conductors are kings. They choose the music to be played and the soloists to be used," O'Conor notes. Because there are no Irish conductors in major positions around the world, Irish musicians and composers are losing out, he argues.
"There's no proper training in Ireland. There's no academy in Ireland with a big enough orchestra. If you want to be a conductor you have to go abroad."
The music courses currently provided by the universities are largely academic in their focus, he says, and include little practical input. "Students get their music practice with us or with the Cork School of Music." Ireland needs a national college of music along the lines of the NCAD, O'Conor says. Such an institution would offer programmes in classical music, opera, traditional Irish music and dance to degree level. "There's an enormous upsurge of talent in this country. We have the wherewithal to have a conservatoire on the same level as other country's around the world," he says. "At the moment Irish music students are terribly disadvantaged."
O'Conor has earmarked Earlsfort Terrace - the site currently occupied by UCD alongside the National Concert Hall - as the natural home of a performing-arts centre. It's proximity to the concert hall would enable members of the National Symphony Orchestra to tutor students, he suggests. O'Conor estimates that it would cost £5 million to convert the Earlsfort Terrace space into a performing-arts centre. At a later stage, he would like to see a recital hall built at the back of the concert hall, he says. The £5 million, however, is only the beginning. If the Taoiseach is genuine in his concern to establish a performing-arts centre, he's going to have to find considerably more than this. The Earlsfort Terrace site is currently occupied by UCD's faculty of medicine, which includes the expanding nursing studies programmes and the departments of agriculture and food engineering and of civil engineering. Although in some quarters the university is accused of hanging on to the city-centre location at all costs, the reality is that it has no option. UCD would like to unite all its faculties on the Belfield campus but it lacks the funding to build and fit out new premises.
It's estimated that it would cost in the region of £25 million to relocate the departments that are based in Earlsfort Terrace. A further complicating factor is the fact that any forthcoming money must be spent on the faculty of veterinary medicine. Last summer a report commissioned by the Veterinary Council recommended the closure of the buildings on Shelbourne Road that currently house the faculty. A new veterinary college located in Belfield would cost in the region of £22 million. At more than £50 million, then, the creation of a centre for the performing arts in Earlsfort Terrace looks expensive. But it may be cheap at the price. It would provide the country with two vital assets - the centre itself and a new vet college - and solve the problems of a wide range of educational interests.
