Exclusive: ENO orchestra to play countryhouse opera
OperaWe hear that the orchestra of English National Opera has been engaged to play Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa at Grange Park Opera next summer.
It will be conducted by ENO’s former music director, Martyn Brabbins, who resigned over ACE-driven cuts. The director is Sir David Pountney, ENO’s formative powerhouse artistic director.
This is a massive coup for Wasfi Kani at Grange Park and a finger in the eye for the funding authorities who have reduced English National Opera to a twin-city shuttling shambles. While the ACE fumbles, countryhouse opera is flourishing.
pictured: GrangePark’s opera house
Where, exactly, are the details of this “twin-city shuttling shambles”?
The last murmurings from ENO when they announced their pitiable 24/25 season was when we were told that more details of the supposed move to Gt Manchester would be available in September. Well, nothing so far and I can’t help but suspect that the ongoing behind closed doors negotiations have been more about killing the whole idea that working out a viable plan.
Not that I care whether it ever happens because all concerned, including the London based media have shown little enthusiasm, to say the least, for this ACE based balls up. Better for all if it doesn’t happen and ENO can just stay put in St Martins Lane with delightful summer country house excursions.
As for those of us in Gt Manchester and the North West in general? Well, why not spend some of the money that was designated for this, if indeed there ever was any, on Opera North and Northern Ballet? After all, they at least are already here and we would be spared the whining of those forced into what many apparently see as an exile to the cultural outer limits.
Well now you’ve got a nice big shed, which I’m sure will be put to excellent use and will put to rest any notion of Manchester being the “cultural outer limits”.
During Stuart Murphy’s recent vandalistic reign as ceo of English National Opera (ENO), Murphy deliberately sabotaged the annual collaboration between Wasfi Kani’s Grange Park Opera and the English National Opera Orchestra.
It is wonderful that Wasfi has been forgiving enough towards ENO to resurrect her generous predeliction towards ENO, by supporting and joining forces with the newly maimed, and now part-time ENO Orchestra.
Alas, the many other grievous bodily harms that Murphy has inflicted upon ENO cannot so easily be repaired.
Murphy no more deserved to have been honoured with a valedictory CBE than did Paula Vennells (disgraced former ceo of the Post Office).
1. Delighted that the ENO orchestra is getting some work outside the truncated seasons that they now have.
2. It’s horribly ironic that an institution originally established as a way of getting opera to the general public as opposed to those who can afford country house opera should have to do this.
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