Northern ballet appeals for opera bailout
balletNorthern Ballet, which has been performing without live musicians, is now appealing to Opera North for some kind of joint venture.
The beleaguered ballet chiefs say:
As we shared with you 12 months ago the financial pressures on Northern Ballet, driven by rising costs, have forced us to make a number of difficult changes across the company, the most challenging of which was the decision to perform to recorded music at some performances. We fully appreciate that this has led to an uncertain and worrying period for the members of the Sinfonia.
It is now clear that the financial landscape in which we operate will remain pressured for the foreseeable future and that we need to continue to find new ways of working to ensure the sustainability of touring.
Today we informed the Musicians’ Union that we have begun a dialogue with Opera North to explore a potential partnership that would help sustain both companies. We do understand how upsetting this news may be and don’t underestimate how challenging the past 12 months have been for the members of the Sinfonia. We must look at any option that will ensure the financial stability of Northern Ballet and allow a route back to more live music for audiences who experience our work.
Opera North say:
We are beginning to explore a strategic partnership with Northern Ballet which would include the Orchestra of Opera North performing alongside the dancers of Northern Ballet, aiming to ensure that audiences continue to have access to live, large-scale ballet and opera in their local theatre.
Whichever way you look at it, musicians are going to lose orchestral jobs.
Whichever way you look at it, this is a positive step. Perhaps report that?
Since it is self-evidently a negative step for the loyal members of the Northern Ballet Sinfonia, your ludicrously Panglossian assertion falls at the first hurdle.
Given the state of the balance book, I would say loyalty has very little value.
I’m sure you would.
The Northern Ballet Sinfonia will never come back.
“The Northern Ballet Sinfonia will never come back.”
And that’s a bad thing. Not a ‘positive step’.
Can’t really make it any simpler for you.
This won’t be as sudden or as one-sided as described. Leeds is a very small pond and many senior leaders in both organisations are friends. The CEO of Northern Ballet was Richard Mantle’s protegee until he jumped ship from ON not that long ago.
It’s only “sudden and one-sided” if you’re an affected musician.
(For “musician” read: entirely dispensable, replaceable, interchangeable, low waged ‘recourse’).
The management continues to expand, self promote and self aggrandise.
Oh, it will be ‘one-sided’ alright- management self-preservation at the expense of performers.
Clearly, a merger means one rather than two orchestras. Can Leeds support two orchestras?
Leeds isn’t supporting either of them- the audiences in the various cities they visit (including London) do, followed by all taxpayers’ funds (allocated by Arts Council England) and donors.
Don’t forget how much opera orchestras love playing ballet scores.. NOT
eg: Royal Opera House Orchestra
There are so many fabulous ballet scores….do we really need need to list them here for those ‘alleged’ ballet hating musicians? How about Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Ravel, for starters.
Northern Ballet already do not perform Stravinsky and Ravel ballets (actually, very very few companies perform Ravel’s ballets at all, the only exception being Daphnis and Chloe, which for some strange reason is only danced once every 10 years- Paris Opera Ballet was last to dance it although the Royal Ballet has an excellent production that they haven’t touched for 20 years.)
Some of Northern Ballet’s productions have scores that are original but not well known, or a patchwork of various excerpts put together, but NB Sinfonia manage to make all of them sound like top drawer Tchaikovsky or Stravinsky works, which is no small feat.
Northern Ballet have one Prokofiev ballet -Romeo and Juliet. They staged a ballet to Janacek’s Intimate Letters string quartet to a recording, and this season Strauss’s Four Last Songs was also danced to a recording- no singer, no orchestra let alone an orchestra of the size intended by Strauss and the choreographer.
Before July this year they danced Romeo and Juliet accompanied by Northern Ballet Sinfonia. I saw two of those performances- the orchestra was outstanding. Since September it has been danced to a recording, and several audience members documented that it was not as good as hearing NB Sinfonia play at the performances.
I cannot see how clashing schedules with Opera North would enable a “shared” orchestra to be possible. What in effect will happen is that both companies will have to reduce their number of performances, or Northern Ballet only gets live music for about 6 shows a year and the rest will still be recordings. Which is what is already happening- but they don’t need to fire NB Sinfonia to do that.