How Arts Council England wrecked the nation’s opera
OperaThe three-year funding deal between ACE and English National Opera is a fudge that does no-one much good.
The key sentence is this: The provisional budget of up to £24million investment for 2024-25 and 2025-26 is to support the ENO make a phased transition to this new artistic and business model, and will include work split between their new main base and London. This will be subject to application and assessment with a decision by the Arts Council expected this summer. This funding would be in addition to the £11.46 million already agreed for 2023/24.
In plain English: ENO has three years to find a base outside London in order to continue presenting opera within London. A judgement of Solomonian wisdom? More like a tactical retreat by ACE and a longer stay on death row for ENO.
Where will ENO play in future? It takes more than three years to build an opera audience and most bases around the country are covered, or in trouble. Opera North is nervously embracing new management. Welsh National Opera has been barred from playing in England. Glyndebourne Touring has been defunded by the Arts Council. Glyndebourne, together with other countryhouse festivals is facing a difficult summer. Nevill Holt Opera has slashed its season. One other company is facing dangerously low sales.
ENO will find small pickings when it ventures forth. Three years from now, it will still be in crisis.
Covid and Brexit hit the opera world below the belt, but the attendant problems might have been surmounted were it not for the Arts Council’s unexpected triple attack on ENO, Glyndebourne and WNO.
A climate of hostility towards opera was created. A state of siege set in and confidence sank. In mass media, opera was once again presented as a pastime for the privileged. The ACE-ENO stay of execution is being spun in some quarters as the toffs protecting their own.
Opera has been given a bad name by Arts Council England. It will take years to recover from the onslaught.
pictured: ROH Aida: ROH/Tristram Kenton
Glyndebourne is largely sold out for this year. But, that aside, the state of ENO has been apparent for more years than post Brexit and Covid and the campaign mounted by the London based ‘great and the good’ has won if not a secure future for ENO but another £24m to, I would suggest, keep it performing in London whilst doing a bit of touring in all but name elsewhere.
I totally agree about the evisceration of Opera per se but this clinging on to St Martins Lane to the exclusion of others still smacks of metropolitan elitism.
You can maybe tell from this that I don’t live in London and my concern is more what will happen to ON and WNO as ACE throw yet another load of taxpayer money at ENO to establish a main base which wherever it is will still play second fiddle to the Coliseum.
Many of us that have followed the slow demise of ENO over the years might now say that enough is enough and it and us should be spared yet another attempt to resuscitate this living corpse. But I suppose we will have to wait until after 2026 to see when, how, and at what cost the next rescue plan will be. Meanwhile, the rest of the Lyric stages are left to fend for themselves as best they can.
“this clinging on to St Martins Lane”
Isn’t part of the problem the fact that ENO is stuck with the freehold?
I’m not a property expert and certainly no expert on the disposal of 2,000+ seater theatres, but it must limit their options, surely? The heating bill alone must be massive.
Yes, Glyndebourne sold out by those who can afford to go, buy a frock, an expensive picnic, a hotel in triple figures, and then have a night in the country! I have never been to Glyndebourne in my life other than at the Proms or in Liverpool as the touring wing of the opera company, and affordable.. ENO reaches out to everyone for as little as £10, and opportunities for lesser known singers. I came down last Saturday from the north to see Die Tote Stadt, which I had never seen before, and I only paid £10 to get in for the afternoon performance to sit in the same seat in the Balcony, which was upgraded to the Upper Circle because of problems in the Balcony, and then only paid £38 return from Harrogate, North Yorkshire. There and back in a day, and a fine performance with the Coliseum, apart from the Balcony, close to full. ACE take note!
And yet Glyndebourne has a lot of cheaper tickets plus all the standing places and easy access by public transport. Surely no frock needs to be bought as the dress code isn’t that strict and frankly I’ve been wearing the same £45 M&S penguin suit for a decade.
The only reason I can see it won’t work for you is the travelling distance. But there are other summer festivals nearer to Yorkshire than Glyndebourne. But please don’t feel like you have to put down an important opera asset of the UK to elevate another.
For years I went to Glyndebourne regularly in £10 standing spaces from which you can see and hear brilliantly. Now they cost £15 – £20 but still one of the great bargains. I’m so sorry you’re put off by the outdated stereotype, did it ever exist? If/ when you go I think you’ll be struck by the sense of commitment shown by everyone involved and by the world-class opera that results. Now that I’m older and can afford it I go for more expensive seats but a big part of it is that I’m happy to support an outfit that looks after its singers and players so well and is so adventurous in exploring repertoire.
“ACE take note!”
It doesn’t, that’s the problem.
I live in Manchester and use a visit to Glyndebourne as my main holiday each year. The cost of tickets is to some extent offset by the overnight cost of accommodation and the cost of train travel between Manchester to London is certainly more than the cost from Harrogate! You don’t even need to ‘dress up’ just because they suggest you do.
My problem with ENO is that they have become a money pit which the management and ACE have been able to fill. And, Opera North whose future we should be more concerned about, is on our doorstep and more millions thrown at ENO hardly helps secure its role as the prime stage for our respective regions.
Well, I’m enjoying productions from both Glyndebourne and Covent Garden – both the Opera and the Ballet – and I live in Canberra. Both houses now have their own streaming services.
Well said, Maria.
This is not levelling up. It’s levelling down.
One wonders if anyone at the Arts Council is aware that Opera North itself started off as the northern branch of English National Opera!
My take on things is this. A full-time opera company in Manchester is actually a good idea; it’s the largest city in Europe without one, and there’s no reason a Mancunian Opera couldn’t stage, say, half a dozen productions a year, as do companies in comparable continental cities like Lyon and Liege. In a healthy artistic environment, Mancunian Opera would be set up as a new, independent company, separate from ENO. Opera North could maintain its base in Leeds, continue to tour to Newcastle and Nottingham, and replace Salford with Liverpool (which has been dropped by Welsh National Opera).
There’s no reason London shouldn’t be able to support two full-time opera houses, as Paris, Berlin and Vienna do, but I just don’t think ENO, in its current state, is sustainable. It can sell out occasionally, but only with things like Carmen and Boheme (which would probably be commercially viable without state subsidy). And who these days wants to hear them in archaic translations, when most of the audience depend on surtitles for comprehension anyway?
ENO doesn’t need to move to Manchester, but it does need to leave the Coliseum. A move to a smaller venue similar in size to Berlin’s Komische Oper (any chance they could take over Sadler’s Wells again?) would allow more adventurous repertoire. There were quite a lot of empty seats for Tote Stadt at the Coliseum, for instance, but it would have been full at Sadler’s Wells.
If ENO is to persist with the singing in English policy, the logical choice would seem to be to prioritise British and American repertoire (i.e., everything from Purcell to Birtwistle). From time to time this has seemed to be a kind of implicit priority, but the presentation of operas actually written in English could become part of its core remit. As it is, it’s striking that the two operas we know to have been dropped for cost reasons from the 2022/23 season (King Priam and Gloriana) were both by British composers. A house which offered us, say, The Knot Garden, Gawain, A Village Romeo and Juliet, even (dare I say) Sullivan’s Ivanhoe, Boughton’s The Immortal Hour and one or other opera by Stanford… along with, say, The Tender Land, Vanessa and something by Carlisle Floyd, really would have a unique selling point. (But good luck selling this idea to the Arts Council!).
Welsh National Opera hasn’t precisely been barred from touring to England and their autumn and spring tours in 2023/24 tour are still scheduled to visit most of their normal venues (though, as I say, Liverpool has been dropped). I did wonder if we could have expected their Trittico (summer 2024, Cardiff only) to reach Birmingham, if ACE hadn’t cut their funding.
Another important point: it’s not all the Arts Council’s fault. The main thing that makes opera inaccessible is its cost. That’s why the main thing the Arts Council can productively do is to subsidise ticket prices. But the companies themselves are (it seems to me) worsening the situation by opting for sneaky ticketing strategies that make it awkward for people to obtain the cheapest seats. Ten years ago, I regularly went the Theatre Royal, Newcastle to see Opera North, and it was always possible to grab seats in the gods (which was often the first section to sell out). When I tried to book for Opera North’s recent Ariadne aux Naxos in the same theatre (first time I’d been there for a good few years), I found that only the stalls and grand circle were open. When I looked back at the website a few weeks later, the upper circle was now available, but not the gods (I checked the night before the performance for curiosity’s sake; it never did open). The same policy seems to be being followed with the forthcoming performance of The Pearl Fishers in Leeds, where seats in the highest tier are available only for performances where the lower tiers have almost sold out.
ENO frequently closes the amphitheatre (see the forthcoming run of Blue, where this is case for every performance). And among the summer festivals, Grange Park seems to be following a similar policy this summer (attic closed for almost every performance, and balcony for most of them). Also, at Opera North at least, I’m pretty sure that seats that used to fall into the cheaper price brackets have been shifted into higher ones. Perhaps this is judged to be a necessary commercial strategy, but I’m not convinced; some people who would have come if they could count on a 25-pound seat at the front of the gods may now not come at all.
A last point – if Welsh National Opera is eventually forced to curtail its English touring as a result of the Arts Council Cuts, the obvious need for a new regional opera company will be in the south-west. Opera Wessex, anyone?
Your observation about the gods at Theatre Royal struck a cord, 1965/6 I was taken to see Don Giovanni on a Saturday afternoon. Dad and I loved it!! Many parents these days will think twice about taking an 11 year old to see an opera if the ticket is three figures but £10/20 is different.
Also, I don’t like ‘children friendly’ events , they only encourage youngster’s short attention spans.
My partner has worked at the eno for 30 years and now to be told she has to move north what do you think.can she get job now dont think so its ok everyone saying about the opera but what about there jobs
Discovering opera in my 30s, when I learned I could sing it rather well, I have been searching for suitable operas to attend to fill in the considerable gaps in my knowledge. In particular, I wish to take my children to watch them with me.
We are in the Midlands, too far from London or Manchester for either of those to be any use to us. I do not wish to see some newfangled take: I wish to see classics. On the rare occasion I find something suitable which is on a day and time which one might conceivably take a child to, the seats with a reasonable view are sold out and not even two pairs of seats can be found. I am still searching.
Then I read all this bleating about opera needing more funding and it taking years to build an audience. If opera wishes to have an audience, perhaps it might try putting on a much higher proportion of its performances during school holidays and weekends and more at an earlier time? Oh, and perhaps in Birmingham?! Now, maybe I am missing something but, if I am, I surely am not the only one.
Of course, in most continental European countries, a city the size of Birmingham would have a full-time resident company. Birmingham Opera, the company founded by the late Graham Vick, performs infrequently, and might be a bit avant-garde for your taste. But Welsh National Opera tours to Birmingham two or three times a year (you can see The Magic Flute there, which is a good option if you’re going with children, in a couple of weeks’ time – though the production has not had good reviews). And English Touring Opera visits Leamington and Cheltenham.
Welsh National Opera hardly ever sells out at the Birmingham Hippodrome, so ticket availability ought not to be a problem, even quite close to the day.
I agree that the provincial companies would do well to offer more weekend matinees, both with children in mind, and for people coming into the city for the opera from surrounding small towns and countryside.
However, no start time for evening performances suits everyone. Start at 7:30 and some people will complain they can’t get home easily afterwards; start at 6:30 and others will complain that they can’t readily get to the opera in time after work. Some people want time for dinner beforehand and might even prefer an 8 o’clock start (which is normal in France, Italy and Spain).
A general election next year is likely to finally kill-off the fake levelling-up agenda on which ACE predicated its ENO decisions.
A Labour government seems likely to abolish ACE completely and pass most arts funding to the Metro Mayors and local government.
Funding for England’s national companies, such as ENO and ROH, will likely be passed to DCMS, as happens in Scotland, with its Department of Culture directly funding and overseeing Scotland’s national companies.
What an irony that ACE’s war on opera could well be the final act that destroys an organisation – not ENO but ACE itself!
So which is the mysterious company with ‘dangerously low sales‘?