Just in: ACE moves opera company to Sheffield
NewsArts Cancel England has just forced English Touring Opera to relocate to former steeltown Sheffield.
Are they missing something here?
Sheffield was chosen by ACE as the home for a National Centre for Popular Music. It opened in March 1999 and closed in June 2000.
ACE must have suffered a geriatric loss of corporate memory. It just keeps repeating its mistakes.
Here’s the press release, just landed:
English Touring Opera (ETO) is delighted to announce the city of Sheffield as the company’s new home, and will relocate its offices there by the end of October 2024 as part of the Arts Council England Transfer Programme.
The decision is a result of an extensive and ongoing consultation process with ETO staff, performers and technical teams, as well as partner venues and organisations, local councils and schools to ensure the greatest positive impact on the widest possible audience. 85% of ETO’s work already takes place outside of London, and therefore exploring options as part of the Arts Council England Transfer Programme was a natural extension of the company’s mission to make exceptional artistic experiences available to all. ETO brings outstanding live productions and impactful education and community projects to thousands of people across England each year, visiting more towns and cities than any other UK opera company.
Sheffield is a major, historic city with a thriving cultural and creative industries sector, accounting for 7.2% of Sheffield’s working population – almost double the national average. ETO already has existing links with Sheffield built through its regular visits to Sheffield Theatres on its tours and work with the Sheffield Music Hub and partner schools in the area. This move allows the company to deepen its relationship with Sheffield Theatres and work closely with new partner organisations such as Music in the Round in broadening the scope of their work and introduce new audiences to opera. ETO also looks forward to building on exciting initial discussions around partnerships with Sheffield Hallam and Sheffield Universities. Sheffield is ideally located for much of ETO’s touring cycle, especially for its other venues in the North of England, which include Buxton Opera House, York Theatre Royal, the Gala Theatre in Durham and Storyhouse in Chester.
I can see the next phase being ACE squeezing out Opera North, now Yorkshire will also have ETO.
ETO already performs in Yorkshire and has done for years, in venues not served by ON.
What would have been good is if ACE had given Opera North funding to return to the Lyceum as part of their season! ‘The North’ already has such a great asset in ON.
Nothing intrinsically wrong with this unless (with the help of ENO and Ellen Kent) it dilutes Opera North’s audience.
IMO, protecting Opera North should be the priority.
Time will tell.
Does Slipped Disc ever consider something to be good news story? ETO will be a great fit for Sheffield – and vice versa – as the cultural scene is thriving in music, theatre, visual arts and writing; and as a touring company it makes sense to be based in the centre of the country.
The National Centre for Popular Music fiasco was more than 20 years ago, and completely different – a total red herring in this story.
Look at that list of regional partners and explain *why* this is a bad idea? Or you can just assume it’s self evident, when it’s not to many of us working hard in a really exciting region, not just griping while dealing in tittle tattle and cribbing from the tedious classic fm social media. This is just the usual Slipped Disc sneering and small-minded London parochialism with zero insight into the (very good) process undertaken by ETO. A totally unrelated crap museum was set up and shut down a quarter century ago, so no culture for the proles north of Watford gap? You’re as unserious as you are ungenerous, Norman, and that’s why everyone sees Slipped Disc as a mean-spirited irrelevance. In the meantime, there is music to be made, shared and enjoyed while you trade in gossip. Bore on.
Well said.
Not just Londonism. This is part of the sustained attack on the ACE — which I am disposed to support, given their actions over the last few years.
But SD may be wrong on this move: it would seem to make a lot of sense. As long — and here I concur with the alarm of several posters — as it does not threaten Opera North.
“small-minded London parochialism”?
One or two reminders:
Opera North started life as ENO North, a direct offshoot of the London company.
The Royal Opera has made two attempts to set up a base in Manchester.
Glyndebourne Touring was based in the SE and covered the North and Midlands.
Ellen Kent serves the North but is based in the SE.
ETO was based in London and served the North.
This Northerner finds northern parochialism a complete embarrassment. Opera is not an easy sell in the North. Lose the chip and grow up.
Precisely. You’re picking a fight with your shadow and missing when someone agrees with you: chippiness and small-mindedness just as boring when it comes from a Londoner as from a northerner; and it’s tedious in the extreme from this blog. Just as you say; there is a rich cross-fertlisation between the capital and the regions and this sort of hand-wringing from Norman that someone moving out of London *must* be bad is silly.
There is no comparison to be made with the National Centre for Popular Music. ETO are moving their offices to Sheffield, not building a £15 million museum which no one was prepared to pay to go and visit.
No objection to this move in principle (it hardly matters where ETO is based, given its performance model, and it will probably save money to work out of an office in Sheffield).
However, I am concerned for the future of Opera North, which could eventually get squeezed out of the funding picture once ENO is in Manchester and ETO is (on paper) a northern company.
Why does the Arts Council equate “outside London” with the north? The cuts to Welsh National Opera and the Glyndebourne Tour have badly undermined opera in the south-west, Midlands and East Anglia. It takes almost as long to get to London from Norwich (a former Glyndebourne Tour venue) as it does from Leeds; even Bristol (recent victim of Welsh National Opera cancellations) is not that much closer.
“Why does the Arts Council equate “outside London” with the north?”
Simplistic North v South party politics, I think.
Yorkshire people are “genuine”, “salt of the earth”, and “real.”
All other Britons are not, presumably.
Not sure this will be music to the ears of the up to 400 staff of potential “partner” Sheffield Hallam Uni who face redundancy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn335jk3nzpo and not sure which current disciplines would have benefited from a partnership. However, I remember well in the 60s seeing ‘touring’ operas at the Lyceum Theatre and playing in amateur orchestras for operatic productions. Also remember the Winter/Spring Concert series at the City Hall, with a concert on alternate Friday and Saturday nights from October to April, all for the princely sum of 1 shilling a concert, and seeing many international orchestras, soloists and conductors my later music student colleagues from London couldn’t afford to go and see. I believe the frequency declined in later years to perhaps one concert a month, but this has to be good for Sheffield per se.
At least ETO is still in employment!
Makes total sense for a national touring company that does 85% of its work outside of London to be based in the geographical centre of the country rather than stuck in a hugely expensive corner of the South East, like so much “national” infrastructure.
And since ETO has been performing in Yorkshire for years – in venues unserved by Opera North – I can’t see why it would have any negative impact on Opera North. True, 99% of the ACE’s ideas about opera are abysmal, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. This is actually quite a sensible move, especially given the cuts to orchestral jobs at Northern Ballet.
“And since ETO has been performing in Yorkshire for years – in venues unserved by Opera North – I can’t see why it would have any negative impact on Opera North.”
Audiences travel.
Forced?
It’s clearly ETO’s choice.
And why does it matter where they are based? It’s where they tour to that counts.
On the one hand, if there’s a company for which it makes sense to move out of London, it’s the ETO, that is already traveling extensively outside the capital. On the other hand, we’re talking moving offices, not performances (which are already touring), so…what’s the point? This seems quite silly to force them to move, to be honest.
It looks like ETO will create their new productions and premiere them in Sheffield when they fully move here in 2025/26, so it will be more than just an office in a few years. All good for the northern economy and its creatives, especially a city outside the Liverpool/Manchester/Leeds corridor.
How about doing something sensible for a change, such as locating an opera company where there is an actual opera house?
Umm … seen opera at the Lyceum ? Much ?
The UK is not Germany, it does not have a genuine opera house with a large stage and orchestra pit in every city.
I’m not including modest theatres with “Opera House” pretentiously displayed outside. A strange affectation.
Sheffield is 38 miles from Manchester, ENO forced to move to Manchester, ETO forecast to go to Sheffield why not combine the two ? Also if ETO in Sheffield why not try to mix things up joint concerts with brass band short opera in first half ( there are quiet a few) brass band like Grimthorpe Colliery Band in 2nd or other way round try to introduce music lovers to different genres.
Extensive! Positively impactful! Widest audiences! Deepening relationships! Scope-broadening! Exciting! Artistically exceptional!
The National Unpopular Centre (N.B as I was told sharply at the time ‘not a museum’) for Music which is now ancient history was a completely different case. It was funded by the Millennium Commission via the National Lottery, not ACE. Sheffield is a big city, half a million people and many more within travelling distance, with a very strong sometimes international reach with its theatres, especially the Crucible, and a strong classical musical tradition e.g the much missed Lindsay String Quartet and particularly choral strength. This is a great move for all concerned, and the ETO will find a very warm welcome.
I suspect that ETO will continue to rehearse in London even after their offices move to Sheffield (I may be wrong). It is prohibitively expensive for singers from outside London to have to relocate there for extended rehearsal periods (often 5 weeks or more). Opera companies never cover the true cost of this and we have to rely on the generosity of friends to plug the gap. This imposition on friends becomes increasingly awkward the more one works in London.