David Sanderson

2: Tom Cruise @bfi nuggets. Calls Christopher McQuarrie in desperation to sort out MI script starting with climbing gloves scene where red light =not sticky and blue=sticky. "Without a breath he said: “Oh well, blue is glue, red is dead”. Exceptional storyteller, Cruise added

1: Tom Cruise nuggets from @BFI Funny on MI Ghost Protocol. Said while filming he knew he had "a lot of pieces in place” but “there is no story”. eg “I did not know why I was [climbing] Burj [Khalifa in Dubai] we will figure that out later. Problems for another day.”

This is the stirring start to the intro to Tom Cruise ⁦@BFI⁩ tonight with medley of career highlights. He receives BFI fellowship tomorrow. @BFI CEO Ben Roberts paid tribute to Cruise’s advocacy of cinema and huge impact on UK filmmaking https://t.co/SXxIfHcbTE

The mighty Tom Cruise was @BFI tonight talking Jack Nicholson, how Christopher McQuarrie saved at least one Mission Impossible film, and how film schools are failing actors. And also his love of the Scott brothers Ridley and Tony. https://t.co/GdyNw7qW2C

And good to see arts minister @RhonddaBryant @NationalTheatre #HereWeAre also. Still no sighting yet of Sec of State Lisa Nandy at a show at the country's most important theatre though...

Paul Mescal was Indhu Rubasingham's guest at opening night of #HereWeAre @NationalTheatre as he got a flavour of the Lyttelton stage ahead of his NT double bill debut. As per usual @CliveDavisUK review https://t.co/ZoA1BZah35 of Sondheim's last work bang on. Absorbing and surreal

#TheGreatestShowman is coming to London. Read @thetimes about how circus is meeting musical theatre. And about the director’s nerves that audience sing-a-long will drown out the circus art. https://t.co/QkxJuxOIZ1

I think Naomi Campbell might just have asked Tristram Hunt ⁦@V_and_A⁩ when the Steve McQueen exhibition is coming. Her one arrives this June. It is going to open her “Pandora’s box” apparently. Full story @thetimes later https://t.co/dIj8OPKJbN

It also reported that many in the sector felt the cuts, which also affected a number of orchestras, showed ACE “no longer has faith in opera [and classical music] … this is seen as a potential disaster for the sector

It does acknowledge however the financial pressures that all of Britain’s performing arts companies are facing and states that the “real value of regular grants” from ACE to opera companies has declined. It said in the last funding round there was an 8% reduction.

It was also critical of “slow … progress in key areas like a more inclusive and diverse workforce” with 10.6% of the workforce being from the Global Majority [Black, Asian, Latin American, Arab, Mixed and other backgrounds] compared with 23.4% of the UK population.

“Many of the contributors we heard from, large and small, more traditional and more radical, feel that not enough new work is being produced … new work has the potential to contribute to both the ambition and quality of the artform, particularly as a living cultural practice.”

According to the report authors, the “perception of contributors” was that other countries such as the United States, New Zealand and Denmark were better at “integrating new works into their company repertoire” with San Francisco Opera’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs one cited.

The most performed out of those written after WWII were Benjamin Britten’s A Turn of the Screw and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which were 46th and 49th respectively. All the top 40 were composed by white, European men.

A study of the 6,500-plus opera performances across England between 2017 and 2023 found that the 25 most frequently performed were all over 100 years old led by Puccini’s La Boheme which accounted for over one in every 25 shows.

It concluded that productions “needed to be more relevant and appeal to a wider audience”adding that “the absence of diversity in the repertoire and workforce is reflected in the audiences for opera and music theatre.”.

It added however: ‘It is not just that only a minority of people do attend opera: only a minority (albeit a substantially larger one) are interested in doing so.”