Wanted: Someone to delight ENO audiences
mainFrom today’s jargon-laden advertisement for a director of marketing:
ENO is in the very early stages of a radical transformation and the new team will need to work seamlessly to deliver the business plan which will restore an iconic cultural asset to its rightful place in the national scene.
The Director of Marketing & Audience Engagement is responsible for profitable revenue generation for the company.
The role holder will develop and deliver a strategic marketing plan which identifies the target customers, specifies the requirements to delight them and finally, articulates the business case for doing so.
With an exec like that on board, who needs artists?
If they cannot “delight” their audience by providing first class opera performances, maybe they should consider letting out the boxes with resident entertainment to delight the box holders with whatever they fancy, preferably with the box curtains drawn tight shut during the competing, onstage performances. They could recreate the “delights” of the old Drury Lane of Nell Gwynn (together with her lovely organges), Vauxhall and Cremorne Gardens and the original opera house in Covent Garden.
The original opera house was the King’s Theatre, Haymarket.
At least pepper your tosh with factual information.
For sale. One hardworking opera chorus, and one orchestra. Will work hard for peanuts. No reasonable offer refused.
Please send offers to: The Arse Council.
Visa, Master, Amex, Paypal.
Poor ENO….. the new management does not seem to understand that exciting and good stagings have to with creativity and musical taste with a professional cast and ensemble which has rehearsed and “created” the production….
and a lot less with “will deliver the business plan which will restore an iconic cultural asset to its rightful place in the national Scene”…..
What rubbish statement that is !!!!
This will actually be the fifth marketing director of ENO in five years. That instability alone would hammer sales.
There will certainly be little “delight” if ENO is forced down the Scottish Opera route. I catch SO when I visit Edinburgh and the collapse in artistic standards since they suffered the same cuts now being proposed at ENO is heart-breaking.
Scratch chorus, part-time orchestra, production and technical expertise destroyed, its home now run by a bland west end producer – all this awaits England’s national opera company.
We can only hope the people of England rise up against this vandalism – as our Scottish cousins failed to do.
“The business case for delighting”…what the hell does that mean? Explaining to the producers what the audience expects and what they may have to spend to achieve it? Or explaining to the audience the rationale for cut-rate productions and why, nonetheless, they should be delighted?
Business jargon or not, previous marketing directors and staff at ENO have consistently failed to deliver on these stated requirements previously, which would be basic ones for any responsibly run business, let alone one which seeks to be commercially sustainable. With the Arts Council’s support in question, ENO certainly needs to be better able to stand on its own feet financially if it is to survive.
Huge efforts are apparently being made to turn around a company which most Slippedisc readers seem to agree is a treasure well worth saving. So why is every post about ENO currently published here with such a negative spin? Is Slippedisc’s secret agenda to increase an already substantial workload for the new management? How else do you expect them to advertise for what is – after all – a business management post?