Just in: ENO chairman is finally unseated
OperaDr Harry Brunjes, who has presided over ten years of destruction at English National Opera, is stepping down. He has resisted that move valiantly for a very long time.
The good doctor may now enjoy a happy retirement attending whatever is left of ENO’s performances.
Here’s his bye-bye letter:
As the company prepares for the opening night of La bohème, I would like to take this opportunity to let you all know that the imminent 2024/25 programme will be my final season as Chair of English National Opera & the London Coliseum. By the festive period I will have completed a decade in this role and I simply cannot believe where these 10 years have gone.
So many reflections during my time as Chair, and where to start? First and foremost, it has been my immense privilege to have seen the company produce and present hundreds of world class operas both at the London Coliseum and internationally over the past 10 years. Alongside this, the positive impact ENO makes well beyond our walls continues to inspire, through our engagement programmes in schools and hospitals across the country. I am particularly proud of ENO’s groundbreaking social-prescribing programme, ENO Breathe, which was launched as a response to the global pandemic and continues to support the NHS today.
Of course, a lasting memory will be the enormous response English National Opera received from you and many others at the time of the ACE funding decision in 2022. The Company was literally inundated with tens of thousands of messages, not just nationally, but from around the world. It was both astonishing and uplifting. Clearly, English National Opera has been important to so many people over the generations and continues to be so. There is an overriding sense of warmth and collegiality which, in truth, is the foundation that underwrites the values, ethos, and reputation of this great Company.
In spite of all the challenging issues the organisation has faced over the past decade, I believe that the resilient nature of ENO has won through and the dedication, commitment, rigour, and professionalism remains undaunted. It has been an honour to be Chair of such an important Opera Company and my own enthusiasm and advocacy will continue in the years ahead. With the leadership of Jenny Mollica, Annilese Miskimmon, the ENO Board and the excellence of both the ENO Orchestra & Chorus and, indeed, the whole Company, the ENO moves into the next chapter with great optimism as it approaches its centenary in 2031.
Whatever will be left of ENO by 2031?
Sad to say this, but it’s good news for ENO. Dr Brunjes has been a complete disaster. Under his watch, ENO has dwindled to a part-time company for both the orchestra and the chorus. The short London season with a handful productions is risible for a national, still heavily funded organisation. The rest of the board should follow Dr Brunjes down the plughole. Let them find somebody with passion and drive to lead them and begin the task of restoring ENO to its rightful standing.
ENO has not been a national organisation for decades. And, with our “If we can’t afford it we can’t have it” politics hopefully the grudging move to Manchester will now be binned. Whatever is left of ENO by 2031 I hope, as a Mancunian, that is not anything to do with here. I can hear it now. “Well, we told you moving out of London was a terrible mistake” London oversaw its decline. London can see it through to the bitter end.
this gives me a hollow laugh
as your literary worth did most of us for years.
“where [have] these 10 years gone”?
I’ll tell you:
2014- 2015: 16 productions [ https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2015/apr/22/eno-15-16-season-tom-service-smaller-is-beautiful ]
2024 – 2025: 8 productions [ https://www.eno.org/your-visit/london-coliseum-season/ ]
I don’t want to be rude, or crude, but that is not how I would say ‘bye-bye’…. (‘good riddance’ is one; ‘rhymes with ‘cough’ is another.)
Are we all ready for the New Year’s Honours List..?!
“ENO moves into the next chapter with great optimism”
I’ll have 20mg of whatever he’s on.
Indecent. Good riddance.
Blame all the goons and clowns who appointed him in the first place.
In my whole career, I count ENO as my very favorite job of all. The people, each of them in chorus and orchestra and backstage staff, etc., etc. were the best spirits. I watched the GLORIANA video from long ago with my friend, the late Colin Graham. He remembered all the choristers’ names and had many stories. There was a reason for this. In spite of the odor of mouse outside the pit, it was always exciting to stand there waiting to start and be with all those beautiful people.
Not sure if ENO is another version of New York City Opera. Meaning that even if Harry Brunjes were very skilled and competent, the results still would have been the same.
An art form/hobby, business or service sometimes becomes unnecessarily fragmented and goes beyond supply and demand.
I cannot see the rationale for the comparison with NYCO. In that case it had been in decline for decades, regularly changing its artistic vision so that audiences were baffled as to what the company was really about. Producing annual multi-million dollar deficits had been unobtrusively and all but unsuccessfully patched over.
But it was the singularly cavalier abandonment of Board concensus by its Chairman Susan Baker in first appointing Gerard Mortier to run the company, and second in her agreeing to his non-negotiable production budget of US$60 million. The latter was in full knowledge that this was massively ahead of the company’s existing income stream, including box office revenues which had been steadily falling for a great many years. When Mortier arrived in New York on one of his advance visits, he was informed he would have only $30 million, although where even that was going to come from few had any idea. He walked out.
Harry Brunjes seems to have been a dreadful appointment as Chair of ENO. But Mrs. Baker must surely sit on the top of that particular pile of incompetents.
The man who brought down Serota and the dastardly ACE. I’d buy him a pint!
There have been no changes at ACE. Serota is still in post.
I think you mean, ‘The man who brought down ENO’.
Germany, which for some time has been suffering a recession, has still managed to maintain at public expense umpteen full-time orchestras and opera companies. This
because classical music in its various forms is an untouchable item of state budgets. In the UK, it’s the prime target for cuts. Perhaps we do belong outside the EU.
Just as De Gaulle stated.
A tiny man with a tiny talent. RIP. Finally free to make love to Cressida Pollack with Stuart Murphy behind.