English National Opera begs you to support Bryn Terfel’s petition
OperaA message from the soon-to-be defunded company:
Thank you to everyone for their support since Friday. We want to work with DCMS and ACE to aid the levelling up agenda but it has become clear to us that their proposal needs urgent revision so we can continue to be a world-class opera company in London and perform more regularly in all parts of the country, including Manchester. Please help us to get them to reconsider their current decision by signing this petition, kindly set up by Sir Bryn Terfel.
Click here.
I appreciate his acknowledgement of the need to “level up” regional funding while noting the necessity to not harm the ENO with drastic cuts. The real problem is that the UK’s level of public arts funding falls way short of its peers in France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, and the Nordic countries. There’s not nearly enough funding to go around as needed. Regan/Thatcher neoliberalism was a disaster for the UK. Even Brexit is largely a rippling consequence of those policies, as is Trump in the USA.
ENO have had years to put their house in order. Such arrogance by the Board thinking the impossible would never happen, well it has and hundreds of musicians, singers and backstage and FOH will be left high and dry. The petition will not alter this and the ill-conceived notion they can suddenly move to Manchester is unlikely ever to be realised.
Totally agree. They have helped it sink for 8, maybe 20 years. Stop whining. It‘s over.
Regan [sic], Thatcher, Brexit, Trump.
I guess that covers everything.
Yes, the typical reply of the lazy, blinkered commie.
Evil forces all of them. Great culture – and the performing arts more generally – cannot survive on a purely market basis with the inevitable mediocrity and vulgarity that results.
Maybe the UK thinks its peer is the US; they have never forgotten that they were an empire, and now are the puppy dogs of the reigning Empire (in decline, perhaps).
‘they have never forgotten that they were an empire’
Actually they have, there are far more immediate concerns.
It’s people outside the UK who harp on about it.
Absolutely. I went to a ballet at the Kraków Opera House last month, top price tickets around £14. It was full, many young adults, teenagers and children. A piano duo concert at the Kraków Filharmonia was £8. The wonderful Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab at the fabulous Casa da Música hall in Porto last week cost €25, top price. Things can be done differently……
This list of achievements could all be done (and more) in a permanent base in another city.
Ask anyone on the street if a London opera company should relocate to give another city the benefits and I think most would see this as a positive move. Then why do London opera goers not?
People gush about how modest cities in Germany and Austria having opera houses, (also cue snobbish comments about uncultured Brits, Strictly and football) yet in their eyes, an ENO move is completely out of the question. ‘But Manchester has gets touring companies’ they cry. ‘Opera North can’t fill the Lowry’ is just a thinly disguised way of saying opera isn’t really very…you know…Manchester.
If the ‘Touring opera should be enough for them’ point IS valid, then could it work both ways? London audiences can have the ROH, with the new ENO and other companies touring to the capital. If the honest answer (and I think people aren’t being honest to themselves or their social media pals) is just ‘that’s not how it’s done/it’s always been like this/National institutions should be in London etc…then it’s time to be checking your London Arts privilege. These aren’t good enough reasons not to change.
An ENO move is potentially an excellent long-term opportunity to set up afresh, to plant roots in communities and develop new audiences. I’d argue it has much more potential to truely engage than in Central London.
A touring company being parachuted into a city for a few weeks a year caters mostly for only current opera fans, but we shouldn’t be thinking of simply now. What about bigger ambitions and goals to create something long lasting, rooted in a community? If we all truly believe in the power of the Arts then how can one doubt the potential of this move? Not relocating because some Opera fans won’t be able to see ENO as regularly, cheaply and conveniently, just isn’t a worthy argument.
The pearl clutching/hash tags are well under way. Carefully crafted social media posts (only to rattle around in echo chambers) with a predictable combination of virtue signalling, nostalgia and bragging, ‘I fell in love with opera at the Coli’ to ‘I was #blessed to make my debut there…’. That’s all very lovely for you, but how about people in another area experience the same or potentially even better opportunity?
Re. Jobs. It would be a huge benefit to the music business outside London.
For the record, I live in London.
Of course Opera North was set up in the 1970’s as ‘English National Opera North’ so it begs the question why ENO is being asked to basically do the same thing again and put itself into competition with them.
I wonder why you’re resorting to insults: ‘predictable combination of virtue signalling, nostalgia and bragging’. Does levelling up in point A require levelling down in point B by definition? Is this a levelling seesaw? The truth is that the collapse of ENO in london will see musicians and singers in the hundreds losing their jobs. There certainly aren’t the funds to move them, their families, partner’s jobs etc to Manchester. So we’re actually talking about livelihoods actively destroyed.
There has been no real interrogation at all or feasibility study of moving ENO to Manchester nor a consultation with other regional companies. Indeed it’s news to ENO. The arts council just threw it out there as a fob off to avoid being accused of closing the company.
They should sell the coliseum. Develop a new smaller and dynamic performance space in london and the arts council should fund an opera company that has its roots in the community in Manchester if the people there actually want one. Did anybody ask them? The 210 million pound factory is about to open next year in Manchester so there is cultural investment into what is already a really great arts scene.
I made fun of the what I felt were many pompous and London-centric posts. It is frustrating to see people so in the bubble they can’t or won’t see any alternative to London. Your sensible suggestions are some of only a few I’ve seen.
This petition is a straight forward demand for ENO to stay in London and I see a social media response very firmly about the end of ENO and it being a dark day in England etc etc. Talk of Berlin having 3 opera houses and London being our only world class city, is staggeringly self unaware.
The seesaw has been very firmly weighted in the capital for decades. No one can deny this.
The important issue is as you rightly point out, is the loss of jobs. Redundancy is grim and potential relocation life changing and difficult. However, redundancy is rife in the corporate world and the Arts aren’t shielded from that. Re-employment isn’t as straight forward as the corporate world though and there are difficult decisions to be made to secure ENO’s future.
Your suggestion of two bases is strong one. I really don’t think simply just touring there is the solution.
I can see the ENO orchestra being reduced and/or made part time. Untilising Musicians based in the North would be a game changer locally. Either freelance, the Symphony orchestras, Manchester Collective or Camarata etc… could all be involved on a project by project basis.
Beyond the potential job losses/restructure, I do hope it can work out. That the seesaw needs to shift.
Rawgabbit:
“It is frustrating to see people so in the bubble they can’t or won’t see any alternative to London”
So why did the ROH, presumably part of the ‘London bubble’ as you call it, make two serious attempts to set up in Manchester, and why did both these attempts fail?
Iain:
I was talking of a general blinkered mindset very evident on social media now, rather than failed ROH attempts many years ago
Maybe you’re right, perhaps there isn’t the call for it, so give up. Doesn’t look there’s much of a call for in London really, with a petition peaked and currently crawling to 13000. (That’s 6 Coli capacity worth).
“The truth is that the collapse of ENO in london will see musicians and singers in the hundreds losing their jobs.”
Believe it or not the overriding priority of a national strategy for arts is not to protect currently held jobs. It’s to – provide a national strategy for arts. It’s the same process, like it or not, for the reshaping of any industry.
JB:
Indeed. As rough and tumble at the corporate world. Many in the Arts just don’t realise this.
ndeed. As rough and tumble AS the corporate world. Many in the Arts just don’t realise this.
This is correct in terms of the main argument : there is no plan, no feasibility study, no consultation and no clarity beyond the idea of a “move”
The result will be a complete collapse of the ENO. There will be no “move” as there will be no-one and nothing much to move
If there is to be an opera company in Manchester it will have to be a start-up. And you would be optimistic to think it can be done for £17M
Two points.
‘snobbish comments about uncultured Brits’ has a ring of truth when it comes to opera. I wish it didn’t but it does. Germany has over 80 opera houses I believe.
I grew up in the North and at times the hostility to ‘high art’ (for lack of a better description) was almost tangible.
Secondly, there’a also much truth in comments about the difficulty in filling theatres with opera. The ROH has encountered this twice and Una, who comments here and clearly knows more about than most, has referred to the problem.
11% of ENO’s audience are ethnically diverse – more than any other UK opera house, and this number continues to grow.
Can they prove this and why should it matter?
Yes they can prove this. And I think you know why it should matter.
Of course it matters – ethnic diversity is a signal of cultural diversity and if opera is to survive as an artform it needs to appeal to all, not just the elite. ENO have done great work in this respect.
Not me.
The Coliseum should return to its original identity as a Number One Music Hall/Variety venue. Get the best acts in the country and make it a light entertainment Mecca!
A side note and genuine question. What counts for light entertainment today?
ENO belongs in London. Manchester has Opera North, an offshoot of ENO.
ENO welcomes young audiences. Its productions are superb, a mixture of new and well known operas. This amazing company supported and supports sufferers of covid. The company employs many many people. How can they move elsewhere?
Withdrawing financial help from ENO is an appalling decision made for political ends by those without understanding of our Arts.
Sounds like a worthy cause. You should start a GoFundMe campaign for it.
Manchester has opera north for two weeks per year. If you are somewhere else at that time you have to go to Leeds which does have opera north. I suppose all northern cities are much of a muchness to you.
So why did Manchester reject the ROH?
Twice!
Isn’t the Royal Opera satisfying most of the needs of the public in London that’s into opera? I believe Paris has two opera companies, but NYC had two of them several years ago too. When the NY City Opera closed in 2013 (although revived in 2016 in more of a symbolic than a really meaningful way), the Met across the plaza and fans of that art form in NYC just moved on.
A lot of the cultural elite in Europe and North America, etc, is increasingly self-conscious about the Euro-centric nature of the West. To even aficionados of that form of centrism, how many of them really pine away for more opera?
Despite all, it would be a travesty if the institution of ENO were to be dismantled due to lack of funding. U.K. has slipped into an abyss where not just cultural areas, but all other societal areas are less funded in relation to their European counterparts.
Sorry. No reconsideration. Especially not at this time of rampant inflation and chaotic and comedic government managing the public purse. The ENO ship has sunk after years of foundering and sentimentality is no reason to raise it.
Opera in English? Grand idea. Why not start with a fresh sheet of paper, Bryn Terfel’s energy and endorsement, a charismatic arts administrator, a no huge theatre to fill, and without the strings and politics associated with Arts Council Funding – learn to crawl before walking?