Belligerent ENO is ‘surprised’ by MD’s walkout
NewsEnglish National Opera is insisting that its music director was party all allong to plans to reduce the size of the orchestra and chorus. The company’s board and management says they have documented evidence of his involvement and they question the grounds for his sudden resignation tonight.
Here’s their statement:
The ENO is surprised that Martyn Brabbins has decided to end his tenure as Music Director so abruptly.
As a member of the ENO’s senior leadership, Martyn has been party to all key discussions at all stages and the extremely difficult decisions that have to be made by the Board and Management in constrained financial circumstances.
After nine months of negotiation with Arts Council England, the ENO has reached a position where we are confident we can maintain a substantial level of operatic work – as opposed to the original reality of total redundancy across the entire company (following Art Council England’s previous decision to remove the ENO as a National Portfolio Organisation in November 2022).
As recorded in Board minutes, an all-staff meeting and in correspondence with Management and the Board, Martyn agreed that the position reached with Arts Council England in July 2023 provides a workable outcome. As the ENO’s musical leader, we are disappointed that Martyn has chosen to resign rather than support the company by engaging with the process of creating a sustainable future for the ENO.
The ENO management is in an unenviable position as a result of the ACE’S war on opera and will doubtless be taking painful and difficult decisions. But Martyn Brabbins’s personal integrity is beyond question; if he’s felt he has to go, it’ll be in accordance with his conscience. That should be respected.
ENO needs to fire its PR, if this is the best response they could come up with.
I thought Brabbins’ statement was considered and explained clearly what had led him to take this action, no hint at all of any other motives. It’s almost like they didn’t read it.
I suspect that kind of defensive and un-convincing drivel from the Board confirms why he was right to resign. A brief look at any musical institution in the UK currently shows it is stuffed with people with crazy titles but remarkably few actual musicians! Invasion of the administrons!
This is ridiculously passive aggressive for a company response! More like an angry manager on TripAdvisor than an opera company.
I doubt very much that any MD would agree to a position that laid out the ridiculous level of cuts that slipped disc reported on Friday…
MU and Equity need to join forces to stop these in their tracks!
This says a lot more about you than him!
Martyr is a hypocrite who in this case is either trying to cover his a** or is so negligent that he’s not fit to be in senior management.
Any evidence to support this (outrageous) claim?!
He’s English, so he’d be covering his a***, not his a**.
Totally agree. Well said. And he is nothing more than a common baton beater. No artistry, no real nuance – a crude stand-in when no one else wanted the job. Goodbye.
“Martyr” Brabbins…..indeed!
For many years the ENO board seems to outsiders to have been incompetent!
Interesting – not. I wonder whether any of these management staff are also proposing taking a 40% drop to their salary and simultaneously putting themselves on part time contracts….. Let’s all have a guess about that, shall we?
Given that basic marketing management theory puts PRODUCT at the heart of any business strategy, and the orchestra are clearly integral to the quality of the product output of any opera house, we surely have to question the capability and experience of the management making this cataclysmic and entirely self-defeating decision.
Utterly shameful, as – clearly – is the board. I’m beginning to wonder whether they’re actually getting back-handers from ACE. Well done Brabbins for being the only beacon of integrity in the whole disgraceful shower.
Without ENO publishing the position reached in July (after all, they say it was minuted, agreed in letters, etc) thus proving that the dreadful decision announced two days ago remains the same one as that put before the all-staff meeting in July (in which case, why on earth did it take three months to tell the orchestra that they would be party to major redundancies and savage cuts to all remaining musicians – and, perhaps more unbelievably, how come everyone managed to remain totally silent for those three months), it’s hard to imagine that what Martyn Brabbins may have reluctantly gone along with in July is the same position with which in October he is now faced.
It sounds as if there have been significantly shifting sands during the last few weeks, and it is those which have seen a man well known for his integrity deciding that his only remaining option is to throw in the towel.
Good lord, the delusion is outrageous. There is no sustainable future with this board and the ACE in charge.
Well, I’m sure that will make him want to change his mind. At least it serves as a stern warning to whoever would entertain succeeding him.
Petty.
Everyone has their tipping point. The ENO obviously found Mr. Brabbins’ limit.
It sounds as if ENO is desperate for a scapegoat. Rather, he is a survivor.
What’s belligerent about it? If he went along only to throw his colleagues under the bus this response doesn’t seem especially belligerent at all.
Did they read his statement? There’s a huge difference between knowing the bottom line and agreeing with it.
“Martyn is not a People Team team player.”
I can smell this a mile off.
I have been “party” to discussions in board/committee meetings too, albeit at a much lower level, where minutes have stated certain things on my behalf yada yada.
I have had to have the record corrected more than once. These boards often write what they want to hear and miss out the important distinctions made by them.
Martyn has clearly made the right decision. It seems like a fairly toxic response from the ENO!
The Association of British Orchestras:
A self-appointed club of executives, purporting to “promote, champion and develop orchestras across the UK”.
Still no comment from them on these cuts to ENO, the erosion of contracts at the Royal Opera House, the (temporarily suspended?) BBC cuts and the proposed sacking of Northern Ballet Sinfonia.
Maybe that’s because they actually peddle one narrative, whilst in parallel helping to engineer the catastrophic ‘streanlined’ destruction of UK music in league with Arts Council England and the Conservative ideologues in the DCMS.
They need to be outed and scrapped.
Musicians do not need a fifth column of managers who build their careers on the ashes of UK music.
ABO. A group of failed musicians who resent professional ones! Looking after their own clipboard carrying colleagues, whilst feathering their own nests at the expense of others. Despicable people.
I find it interesting that ENO has now deleted this statement from all its social media which is not surprising given the massive backlash it received.
The senior management team should hang their heads in shame over this. Rather than provide any hope for the future, the statement only further underlined that there is nobody as the top of this organisation or in the communications team who understands musicians, and we have Martyn Brabbins to thank for exposing this.
Brunjes needs to go and a new chair put in place. Negotiations with ACE and DCMS need to reopen. MU, Equity and ISM need to lobby for the Covid loan debt to be wiped. The contract review process needs to be halted.
Strange and rather self absorbed reaction from ENO management, confirming that they are totally missing the wood for the trees. Maybe it’s the management that should be fired rather than the musicians. Am sure it’s cheaper to keep the musicians than the management! Martyn Brabbins is a highly respected and trusted artist among musicians and audiences. The management on the other hand, have a track record of very odd decisions, a few lucky successes, and quite a lot of unfortunate decisions that caused ENO to lose money where they could have made profits instead.