Northern Ballet musicians will earn £5,000 this season
balletHugh Morris has been talking to suuffering members of the Northern Ballet orchestra, who have been replaced by recorded music for much of the season. The numbers he reveals on VAN are horrific.
The musicians I spoke to described a significant decrease in pay because of the change in model, as it offered them both less work, and less well-paid work. Though figures depend on rank within each section, the musicians say that, from an annual income from live Sinfonia playing before the pandemic of around £20,000 (based on around 22 weeks of live work), they expect to earn an income of around £5,000 from live work (based on the seven weeks of live work currently planned until the end of the season).
Read on here.
Coupled with your report that ENO has started terminating the employment of various musicians (apparently with notices going out mid-performance) this is really depressing news. ACE lurks behind this but long-term poor direction from both management and board at ENO (as highlighted in your report) must bear a lot of the responsibility. Dedicated musicians livelihoods seem not to matter to them. The orchestral players at both Northern Ballet and ENO deserve much better than this. They have been failed by a rotten system.
The dancers may also have been “failed.” Any thought for them? Do you not think Northern Ballet would use live music for everything if it could?
The musicians are getting paid for work. Are the dancers getting as much work as usual, at the usual rates?
But we are all as artists ultimately are there to perform to an audience. The situation in the north, – which by the way is much, much poorer than a lot of London and the Home Counties – is that audiences – and even church congregations including Catholic-obliged congregations – have simply not gone back to anything like pre-pandemic attendance. I go to the opera simply to keep informed or introduce others to the opera. There were six of us going. Now there is just me as it is not a priority for my friends with higher heating bills in a colder climate. But for the past two seasons, I and my own very cheap ticket of £13 as a subscriber where you can hear best and see enough with unrestricted view for Opera North in the balcony of the Leeds Grand, have been upgraded to the stalls where tickets are far more expensive but have been left empty so moved the balcony audience down. Ballet the same unless Swan Lake at Christmas. Opera North is struggling for audiences not like ENO, yet started by ENO in 1978. No amount of ticket sales ever pay for any opera or ballet alone without a grant. But if the audiences vote with their feet… finish your own sentence… ENO is bang slap in London in the theatre land of the West End, and London has the advantage of tourism. I am not justifying paying any musician £5,000 a year, but Northern Ballet otherwise could just fold. It is indeed very fragile. Classical music is having to rethink itself.
Sad, insightful but ultimately unsurprising – this is what follows when personally ambitious, disingenuous, over-promoted marketeers are handed the reigns.
Sad, insightful but ultimately unsurprising- this is what follows when personally ambitious, disingenuous, over-promoted marketeers are handed the reins.
You know this isn’t a picture of Northern ballet orchestra members