Wales cuts its opera orchestra to part-time
OrchestrasWelsh National Opera has presented its musicians with a reduced contract from April 2025.
Jo Laverty, Musicians Uion National Organiser for Orchestras said: ‘It will be unsustainable for our members to weather such a hit by falling back to salaries they were on five years ago. It is a devastating situation. These proposals are the direct result of underfunding and defunding of opera. It will impact not just on our members but on WNO’s audiences in Wales and England.
‘This is yet another UK opera company having to contemplate their orchestra moving to part-time employment, meaning stable secure jobs in the profession are simply dying out’.
Annual tutti salaries will fall fo £28,000, not a living wage.
In a matter of months, both English and Welsh national operas will have disestablished their orchestras. The entire post-war structure of UK music is now at risk.
What an embarrassment for Britain. Maybe we need a Saudi Sheikh or a Holywood Star to buy our opera companies the way they do with football teams.
But we need outside of London audiences to return and find new ones. It is not an embarrassment, just a sign of the times when people have different priorities and interests in life, opera not being one of them unless middle class, and then a company has to cut its coat according to its cloth. Since the pandemic, my very cheap season ticket at Opera North in the Balcony has been upgraded to the Stalls. My £10 Balcony ticket to the superb rendering of Jenufa at ENO a fortnight ago, was upgraded to the Dress Circle, and that level wasn’t full either but Ayr least not all over 60 or 70. That’s just my very humble limited experience. All a result of music appreciation not sufficiently placed in the primary schools across the board. The outreach of Leeds Cathedral is amazing but they alone can’t change the world of kids to become the audiences of tomorrow.
Many, many more people care about football. Sorry to say it, but there it is. The acceptance that we’re a niche interest and working out how best to function within that belief is the only way forward.
The nail on the head, the elephant in the room.
Football is heavily promoted on TV, and has been for decades. It is considered “normal”, whereas opera isn’t.
To a large extent it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Having said that, it isn’t difficult to find people who loath football and the culture that all too often surrounds it.
Oh Barry.
If you think football’s popularity is just down to being “…heavily promoted on TV…”, you really are missing the point of quite a lot of things.
The regular comparisons between opera and football are pointless.
ps. Football hasn’t been regularly shown on terrestrial tv for decades. People pay £60 a month.
Two things:
I didn’t say it was “just down” to being promoted.
I said it was “promoted” – it is regularly featured one way or another. Opera isn’t.
Ballroom dancing gets coverage and there’s been minimal uptake in dancing.
Musical theatre gets very little, but the West End is packed.
I could go on.
Hardly anyone going to watch opera has nothing to with football’s coverage on the tv.
Undemanding musicals fill theatres?
Now there’s a surprise.
Lawrence: That’s the uncomfortable reality, which few seem to be talking about.
Hardly anyone goes to the opera in the UK now. If they did, there would be more opera houses. There are plenty of theatres. Maybe people just don’t like opera, or the days of opera being something to aspire to liking, long gone. It’s always been pretty niche.
Opera/Classical music has had the funding/subsidised tickets for years (in a post-War funding model). It’s not as if there hasn’t been the opportunity to get the word out there to the public in the last 60 years.
Opera/classical music has been relatively well funded in that era The funding and audiences have been there. Both have been for granted. We’ve been plodding for years, dodging a crisis here, fire fighting there, but essentially given funding and left to get on with it. Creating our own little culture, careers, bubbles and echo chambers. Now we have the perfect storm of no funding and no audiences and the whole thing seems to be crumbling.
Suddenly, it’s all the Arts Council’s fault. Quick! Start the personal attacks on those who run it! Or maybe it’s the public’s fault? More interested in reality tv and football. Too stupid to appreciate our lovely music. But please, please come to our concerts though, we need your money. Don’t ask for anything different though. We like it just how we’ve always liked it and you should just instantly like it just how we do. And don’t clap between movements.
How many straw man arguments can you cram into one final paragraph?
“Maybe people just don’t like opera”
They don’t know, how would they? That’s the point that you seem unable to grasp.
Perhaps they would if opera had the worldwide appeal to help a brand reach billions of people a week.
My colleagues in the WNO orchestra are some of the finest musicians I’ve ever met. To see their pay cut is horrendous and totally undeserved. Why aren’t musicians allowed into the secret conversation going on that results in such shocking decisions?
A very sad end of a once great orchestra
Deeply upset about this, we were so proud of our orchestra and opera company. We are not so poor we cannot do our own culture. Big international companies take billions in profits from our land and we just seem to bow down to them. We need radical thinking politicians, and control of the political scene is absolute. Our views are not relevant to them.
Might one go so far as to suggest a degree of sympathy to the organisations having to take such drastic decisions? That is, of course, while they remain operational unlike so many.
This is the Tory legacy. Underfunding and an obscene obsession with scandal and corruption.
ENO, Northern Ballet, WNO… who’s next to be in such dire straights that cutting their organisation is the only way forward? Yes, we can continue criticise the ‘management’ but I am starting to see it impossible any of them view these as ‘good’ decisions, and are in truth, a devastating blow orchestrated by those pulling the puppet strings.
Horrendous news. I presume it represents c. 10% cut in work and pay, but I haven’t seen any details.
I would not give Northern Ballet leadership much sympathy, though. They want to cut their orchestra entirely, yet hang on to almost unchanged Arts Council funding – talk about having your cake and eating it. There must be a better solution than cutting the NBT orchestra altogether (and risking your entire Arts Council funding application).
Wales, of course, has been Labour-run for well over a decade; the SNP in Scotland has presided over their national opera being cut to the bone. The truth is that these cuts rarely have much to do with politicians, but with arms-length funding bodies which are staffed and dominated by people who resent – indeed hate – classical arts, or in the case of Wales, openly discriminate against companies that do not work primarily in the Welsh language.
I’m sorry. It’s shit but it’s not as simple as simply blaming your preferred political bogeyman. The people making these decisions are certainly dogmatic but they cannot be voted out of office.
Shame on britain.
We are approaching a General Election at which the current Government and all their baggage are likely to be tossed out. It would be good to know just exactly the incoming Government are likely to do in an area where a little money will go a long way to redressing these attacks on Jennie Lee’s heritage.
But, it won’t do any such thing in much the same way that the Welsh and Scottish assemblies have stayed schtum about the cut back in Arts Funding. under the fig leaf of Inclusively v Elitism.
For many of us not in Wales WNO was a lifeline to high class Opera and its cutting back on touring a severe blow. Seems that Wales itself is being prepared for bigger home based cuts to come.
I wrote to Arts Council whose cuts to WNO meant they could not tour to Liverpool. After decades of this being a marvellous intro to top Opera for newcomers and those who can’t afford or manage a night away. They replied with to be expected garbage.
Don’t always agree with your comments, but this is spot on. If people here seriously believe that the end of this Government will herald a reversal, they should think again.
The arts, and the “high arts” in particular (I use the phrase as shorthand only) are caught between both Left and Right, for different reasons. Both are equally destructive.
Unless demand from the public becomes more vocal, nothing will change. The public won’t become more vocal until it realises what it is losing and, to do that, it needs to be fully exposed to the arts in the first place. That isn’t happening.
This is how the Tories treat labor-with-a-small-L. It is in effect demotion or dismissal, disguised as downsizing. An insult to musicians, managers and public alike.
Wales is a Labour stronghold.
This is terrible news why couldn’t a Welsh conductor go travelling like Andre Rieu around the world and show the world the natural talent for musicians and singers
It is sickening seeing the hard work of many over decades to build world class opera companies and orchestras thrown into disarray by underfunding. What would Idloes Owen ( WNO founder) and some of the first company artistes such as Ruth Packer, who made such a great contribution and no doubt sacrifices to get things started, have thought of this way of behaving towards culture in the UK? Quality counts and the means to maintain it should be found. It is also high time that the years of study that go into reaching and maintaining the level for a professional musical career should be respected both as an advanced skill set and with a secure contract and wage.
I have had the pleasure of working with the WNO orchestra. They are an incredible group of wildly talented individuals. My heart goes out to these musicians and their families, devastating news at a time like this.
This was entirely predictable when ACE stopped funding WNO touring in England, without that WNO was never going to be a viable proposition as their opera season in Wales is very limited. Mark Drakeford was never going to step in yet he has spent £34m on the much hated and unwanted 20mph road speed limit in Wales.
This is a first class orchestra and company, their future as a full time opera company looks uncertain and bleak, without them in Wales our arts scene here and in the UK will be poorly diminished.
Shameful.
Thanks for bringing this to everyone’s attention. SD provides a valuable service with this kind of news
And so the devastation goes on. It’s gut-wrenching to continually hear such stories. People’s livelihoods are being compromised by thoughtless governments and local councils. Shame on them, indeed!
Presumably this is as a result of the Tory government ordering the Arts Councils to cut funding for opera. Is this an attempt to kill off opera?
Another victory in Thatcher’s Britain. When will the cultural decimation she started ever end?
Truly sad news… a world class opera company with a world class orchestra and chorus. WNO have taken opera to every corner of the UK, not to mention wonderful worldwide ambassadors for Wales and Britain as a whole. The first opera company to tour Dubai, trips to Morroco and Oman for example. Weekly world class performances from Southampton to Llandudno this company proved they were elite but not elitist. A ticket to Wno costs less than a night at the cinema.
How can musicians be expected to do the same job for a 15% pay cut, support their families and deal with the cost of living.
We must do all we can to support a reversal of this decision and keep Wno alive.
I auditioned there years ago and it seemed like a great gig (many people even flew in from out of the country). Orchestra sounds great, newish theater with a big pit, BBCNOW rehearses in the same complex, salary was acceptable for that part of the country. Plus you can’t call it an elitist group if they spend a ton of their time touring around the region when no one else will. Literally nothing to be gained by cutting this institution in half.
After a career spent mostly in London orchestras I had the privilege last year of being asked to play with WNO for their trip to Prague where they gave 2 splendid and very well received performances of Ma Vlast. WNO should make anyone connected with Welsh and British arts very proud. They are a splendid company and this is such sad news
I appreciate there are highly talented people affected here. However it astonishes me that we should care much about old Italian, German, Austrian etc repertoire being trotted out. This is of little concern to those outside a fairly small core audience. 28k may not be a lot but it is not destitution