It’s curtains now for opera in English

Whatever happens to English National Opera after 2024 – and that’s an open question – there is little doubt that its founding purpose of performing opera in English is over.

It was Lilian Baylis’s dream – her religion, almost – that opera should be sung in the language of the land, so that everyone could understand.

This was a worthy and viable ambition on the original small stage at Sadlers Wells, but once ENO moved to the huge Coliseum the words emerged as a general blur, especially when sung by imported soloists from the Baltic Sea. The advent of above-stage surtitles killed off the rest of the need for English yet ENO persisted with singing in the vernacular as if its life depended on it, as in some sense it did. Singing in English was its last USP. How ironic that a Brexit regime should make that its death sentence.

ENO cannot survive in London without state funding. Its plan to move to Manchester is flimsy, to say the least. The next year may be the last for ENO. It is certainly the end of the line for singing in English such immortal lines (from Onegin) as ‘balls in the country/make us very jolly’.