Arts Diary

NOW HERE'S a phrase to strike fear into the most hardened aesthete: the opera hypermarket. This disturbing vision of arias in bulk on a greenfield site comes from David Pountney, former head of productions at English National Opera. Pountney is giving the Royal Philharmonic Society lecture on the future of opera tonight; and in a discussion I had with him for tomorrow's Radio 3 programme, Music Matters, he said he looked forward to the opera hypermarket complete with cinemas and other entertainments, well away from city centres.

Pountney's radicalism doesn't stop there. He added that he could think of nothing worse than three-hour opera relays on television. "It's the most dreadful TV," he says. But isn't it government policy to show more of these as a way of increasing access? "Yes," he agreed, "but that's just the sort of ignorant thing they would say. They should keep out of things they don't understand." You could warm to this man.

ANOTHER MAN to warm to is actor Paul McGann (below). He says he won't appear in any more theatre productions because of anxieties about performing in front of a live audience. He actually received rather good reviews for his performance in Snoo Wilson's Sabina at London's Bush theatre, but says the experience left him scarred: "I saw the audience piled on top of each other. They were clearly suffering."

This must be a first in theatre history. An actor has actually said he is giving up stage work because he can no longer bear to see the audience in uncomfy seats. Good thing McGann hasn't worked the Traverse in Edinburgh where, like the Bush, you find out pretty quickly whether the person behind you has washed their socks recently. It's a dangerous precedent. If all actors showed such empathy with their audiences, theatres would close more quickly than under the Puritans.

MY ARTSPEAK award for the week goes to Oscar-nominated John Madden, director of Shakespeare In Love. It was good to see him at a press conference on Tuesday trouncing rumours that Gwyneth Paltrow was "aloof" on set. But when trouncing, it's best not to begin with the words: "Everyone has their own way of working." It sounds suspiciously like artspeak for "aloof".

JOHN MADDEN did have a good answer, though, when asked how he would celebrate if he won the best-picture Oscar. "I'll take Spielberg out to dinner," he replied. That will make a memorably short acceptance speech, should he win. We're now in full acceptance-speech season, that time of year when we realise that the world's best actors can't muster a funny line between them. They should take note of an story told by Julie Christie at the Evening Standard Film Awards last Sunday. When a French director was accepting a short-film prize, he said: "Short film; short speech; thank-you."