Job of the Week: ENO seeks CEO

Job of the Week: ENO seeks CEO

Opera

norman lebrecht

April 05, 2024

Not for the fainthearted. Possibly written by AI:

 

English National Opera exists for everyone, creating new experiences with opera that inspires, nurtures creativity and makes a different. Our vision is for lives changed through opera. We take a fresh inspiring approach to opera to reflect the diversity of our culture. The Board of English National Opera is seeking to appoint an experienced, dynamic and resilient leader to take it into its next stage as the company approaches its centenary year.

English National Opera (ENO) is in a period of rapid change following Arts Council (ACE) funding decisions and the requirement for ENO to move its home out of London by 2029. Following a rigorous process, a decision has been made to move to the Greater Manchester area, creating work with and for that area, whilst still retaining a significant annual opera season at the London Coliseum.

A key task of the incoming CEO will be to lead this process, creating a new model of what an opera company can be for the wide range of audiences and communities it serves. The CEO of ENO is also CEO of London Coliseum (LCL) which manages the building and its commercial operation, the profits of which are used, unequivocally, to support the operation of ENO.
The CEO is accountable to and governed by the Board and leads the strategic development and operational executive management of ENO, ensuring good governance and a sustainable business model. The CEO ensures that the company’s work is of the highest artistic, musical and administrative quality, and is accessible to a wide range of audiences and participants, whilst providing a bridge between administrative reality and artistic aspiration.

Please see our Recruitment Pack for further details.

To apply please send your CV with a covering letter and two referees (maximum 2 pages) detailing your interest and suitability for the post to workwithus@eno.org.

Comments

  • Maria says:

    “Following a rigorous process, a decision has been made to move to the Greater Manchester area, creating work with and for that area, whilst still retaining a significant annual opera season at the London Coliseum.”

    More work with and for that area? What will happen to Opera North, I wonder, and their plans for outreach and touring there? Salford is hardly Greater Manchester like Blackburn or Burnley!

    Significant opera season in London? Their season in London has got shorter and shorter.

    • Cynical Bystander says:

      However short their season in London it will almost certainly longer than the time they are exiled in Gt Manchester. As a proud Mancunian I still can’t get round how patronising and grudging this forced move is. In my view, as forced on us as it is on them. The new CEO will likely have to have ENO’s new ‘home’ pointed out on a map to whoever gets the job. Oh, sorry, it doesn’t actually have a base other than the Coliseum. And no doubt they are still hoping to keep it that way.

    • John says:

      Blackburn and Burnley are in Lancashire, not ‘Greater Manchester’.

  • Frustrated in Farnborough says:

    Poisoned chalice and a half. I doubt any self-respecting intendant would put themselves forward to run this sh*tshow. Better to let Mollica carry on until the dust is well and truly settled. That, or find someone who knows how to proofread communications and can stop the management and board sounding like idiots.

    • V.Lind says:

      Like telling us that “English National Opera exists for everyone, creating new experiences with opera that inspires, nurtures creativity and makes a different.”

      A different what? Subject-verb agreement?

      This communiqué reads as if translated from emoji.

    • jimbo says:

      More poison than chalice methinks.

  • No-Name Sam says:

    Telling that they don’t describe the salary. Maybe they don’t want their ex-orchestra to find that out.

    • Ellie says:

      Nonsense – CEO salaries are rarely advertised – bands sometimes given – but current executive salary banding within £10k is publicly available on companies house. There’s a lot of transparency if you do a tiny bit of looking.

      • Guest Principal says:

        No, ‘transparency’ would be Covent Garden’s senior salaries, which are published on Companies House with names and numbers. ENO’s ‘leadership’ is far less forthcoming, for perhaps understandable reasons.

  • Voice from the Past says:

    They would be much better served by starting with replacing the Chair and most of the Board. A new CEO is unlikely to achieve very much without such changes, given he’ll have an opera company with a truncated, part time orchestra and chorus and a lot of unhappy people.

  • my permanent pseudonym says:

    “The CEO ensures that the company’s work is of the highest artistic, musical and administrative quality”

    I foresee a problem: ‘today’s’ existing musicians are now no longer working – their season is all but over in any practical sense prior to being made redundant; ‘tomorrow’s’ musicians have yet to be hired.

    So exactly whose ‘highest musical quality’ is the new CEO to ensure?

    • my permanent pseudonym says:

      I see the Candidate pack has one very important omission: on retirement, the new CEO should be prepared to accept a CBE for ‘services to opera’ !

      :/

      • Anon says:

        Usual! Administration thinking themselves above the Artists whom they serve/manage – whereas, now its the other way around.
        Look at the orchestras and their inflated numbers in the office.

  • ex ENO supporter says:

    They’ve learned nothing from their recent travesty by having to leave London for an already operatically well served Manchester.
    The dysfunctional management should bow their head in shame for this sad debacle and blot on the dying musical landscape of this once musically glorious UK.
    May God help any successful applicant for this poisoned challenge!

  • Steve says:

    “Resilient” is probably the key word.

  • Mary Robinson says:

    Blame this on the philistine Arts Council who’ve made it clear they dislike opera.

    • Guest Principal says:

      A ‘dislike’ shared by Brunjes and most of the board and senior management. The directors are involved solely because they’re social climbers, the senior management because no-one else would over-promote them.

  • Simone says:

    Not so much job of the week as poison chalice of the week.
    Their move to Manchester won’t get me to go there. Nothing will.

  • Thomas M. says:

    Well, I’m available. And unlike many, I wouldn’t mind moving to Manchester either. In fact, I’d move there in a heartbeat. It’s a great city.

  • Guillam says:

    Do you think the board just want someone to continue the plan to reduce the payroll within a new ‘strategic plan’? (i.e. halving the number of performances and staging commercial work instead, and then commencing ‘consultations’/redundancies across departments, the most recent being the orchestra’s fire and rehire under part-time contracts?) Or has this already been self-destructive enough?

  • Officer Krupke says:

    Why board the Titan?

  • Lucy says:

    An absolutely thankless job. You’ll please no one. Good luck to whoever applies!

  • A well-wisher says:

    I cannot recommend Simon Webb highly enough for this job!

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