Another day, another initiative advanced by one party to trump an earlier initiative of the other. A few months ago, Labour told us they would bring matrons back into hospitals to take responsibility for hygiene. Now we have the Tory leader, Michael Howard, also pledging the return of matrons. These, however, would be matrons with power - the power to close dirty wards even against the orders of those new-fangled managers and bean-counters. What we slack British hanker after, it seems, is a figure of authority to keep our hospitals shipshape.In part, this is pure nostalgia for a bygone age. But the very fact that the return of the hospital matron is seen as a vote-winner suggests that the new structures of hospital management are felt to lack something important.
That something is what matrons used to provide: the reassurance of a uniformed figure-head, the evidence that someone is in charge, the presence of someone with the practical knowledge and authority to get things done.There can be little doubt that the financial discipline and record-keeping introduced to NHS hospitals in recent years were necessary and long overdue. Once I was shown the book with these entries, a kind of logbook. I could see that the difference in total playing time between Ehrling's fastest and slowest performance of this opera was less than one minute.Die Meistersinger is four hours long.Ehrling's father, a Malm?nker, had ambitions that his son might follow him into his profession. It was a concert performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring - then seen as a modernist redoubt rather than the orchestral bonne-bouche it now seems to have become - that put Ehrling on the map; it was to become one of his visiting cards.Ehrling's chief conductorship at the Stockholm Royal Opera, from 1953 to 1960, is remembered as a golden age. In 1941 he spent a year in Dresden, studying conducting with Karl B?at the State Opera (Sweden was neutral in the Second World War) and, after the hostilities had ended, went to Albert Wolff in Paris for another period of study.Back in Sweden, his career on the podium had taken off: he was appointed conductor in Gothenburg in 1942 and two years later was recalled to the Royal Opera.
It was as a r?titeur - a rehearsal pianist - that he joined the staff of the Royal Opera in Stockholm, making his conducting d?t there in 1940. It became obvious that the young man was a musical polymath: he studied violin, piano, organ, composition and conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm between 1936 and 1939; in the latter year he was awarded the prestigious Jenny Lind Scholarship.He began his career as a concert pianist - and he remained an enthusiastic pianist, also playing as an accompanist and in chamber music, throughout his life. But the young Sixten showed such ability at the keyboard that his father soon gave in and bought him a Steinway grand. Among the stage-manager's tasks was the exact timing - minutes and seconds - of every single performance of every opera.
