It’s Black Friday in Manchester as ENO dumps its orchestra
OrchestrasEnglish National Opera has rolled out plans for its future half-life in the north.
It consists of Britten’s Albert Herring, with 13 musicians (Oct 25), Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone ( May 2026) and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach (spring 2027). Plus a concert performance of Cosi fan tutte. Only in this last event is the award-winning orchestra of English National Opera fully employed.
As far as we can tell at present, the orchestra will remain in London on life support. It prospects do not look great.
No amount of participatory crowd singing in Manchester can conceal the sorry fact that ENO is destroying its band, along with its 50-year-old brand.
Truly a black Friday.
Don’t forget the rest of the company musicians who are also suffering…… the CHORUS! They, as ever, and despite the sad situation, are performing on stage superbly night after night. True professionals.
THIS!!
While not forgetting too all those backstage, like stage hands, wigs and makeup dressers and everyone else who is silently doing their bit and whose jobs are also production-dependent.
But surely the cost of getting the ENO orchestra all the time up to Manchester will mean less work in London ? They will never sell enough tickets in Manchester to offset the huge expense. What would be the point of that financially? The orchestra will be cut further in London in order to spend huge money in Manchester in that case.They should be relieved that this plan is not based on huge money being spent on them spending weeks in Manchester – that would be a disaster! I think ENO is doing the best they can with this ACE mess to inspire Manchester audiences while not destroying the London orchestra and opera.
So, 1 staged event per year and a concert performance. The main stagings will remain in St Martins Lane and if the cutbacks there are as they seem then ENO will be employing a lot of chorus and orchestra on an ad hoc basis.
This seems to be the worst of all worlds for both London and Gt Manchester. But, ENO have the Coliseum to manage and we have Aviva Studios. Both, requiring large amounts of subventions to keep afloat and to fill.
We’ll see how ENO, ACE, and GMCA propose to fund this supposed transition but it seems to me that 1 chamber opera, which incidentally ON have a brilliant production in their reportery, and 2 avant operas that might please the possible audience in Sth Manchester and the Northern Quarter but seems more programming to undermine the move post 2027.
This all seems to to be more virtual signalling in the hope that the whole thing can be ultimately canned. But, there is no doubt not inconsiderable cost attached to this first phase which ultimately would be better spent letting ENO stay where it clearly would prefer to remain and spending the money on enhancing the Lyric theatre along the Liverpool – Hull corridor.
Maybe I missed something but I was under the impression that ENO would be establishing a presence in Manchester similar to its past occupation of the Coliseum for several decades. Apparently not. ENO explained last year that it would not be based at a specific site. Instead it will host its programme at venues including The Lowry and the (strange, IMO) Aviva Studios. A touring company then – remember those?
Jenny Mollica, chief executive of English National Opera, said that the ENO was “very much looking for an office HQ” in Greater Manchester and would ‘love’ rehearsal spaces but that it could be ‘shared with other partners’. So ENO doesn’t even have a Manchester office yet?
ENO will continue to own the freehold of one of the largest theatres in the UK and will continue to stage operas there. Manchester will be getting Albert Herring with 13 musicians, Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach (5 hours long, I understand) and a concert performance of Cosi fan tutte. The ENO orchestra will be scratching around for whatever work it can get.
The creation of a Greater Manchester Youth Opera Company sounds perfectly fine. As for some vague reference to “celebration of opera and community football” – I don’t know.
A lot of spinning going on but, to me, it looks like a bad deal for all concerned. The Royal Opera’s (2008?) plans looked more substantial but were finally killed off by a letter from the Lowry.
I don’t know what Opera North thinks of this mess but more cash in their direction would have been more productive for opera outside London.
“Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach (5 hours long, I understand)”
My recording is four and a half.
Should work wonders with all those young people who believe that opera is long and boring.
Young, musically illiterate people LOVE the boring and repetitive (see Einaudi). And Glass explicitly allowed people to walk out of and in to the audience during Einstein on the Beach.
It is a very sad day if ENO is really coming to an end. My dad is turning in his grave.
All of you please remember, our government must find the extra £400,000,000 a year to fund our asylum seeker housing bill.We do that and fund the Arts.
I am reminded of the closure by stealth tactics used by British Railways in the 1960s.
Service frequency would be cut to such pitiful levels, that the line would serve very little purpose for its area.
The resulting reduction in passenger numbers would then be presented as justification for closure
This is so depressing. The reality is that we don’t need ENO in Manchester, but it played an important role in London. A sad state of affairs
I live near Manchester – your assertion is invalid.
Ahem…..
Does the cultural vandalism of ENO by the Arts Council have anything to do with it?
I really don’t understand why the Halle orchestra could not be used to perform some opera in Manchester if the city needs to have opera performed there. Most cities in Geremany and Italy has an orchestra who do both opera and symphony concerts, and there really is no reason why the same could not occur in the UK.
Newsflash: this is a fake little season that barely uses ANY ENO resources. The Albert Herring is tiny and, as mentioned above, idiotic planning by the two Miss MisgGuideds now “leading” ENO to its Death by Mediocrity. ON has a great production of this little opera already, only 40 minutes away. And the Philip Glass piece requires only TWELVE specialist orchestra players: not even from ENO orchestra most likely. AND no chorus. Hence they never did at Coliseum. Thus, they are throwing stupid sums of money at their local overrated darling, Phelim McDermot (please no more meaningless juggling or tape balls), to create a giant expensive installation that will also struggle to play London or abroad. And they offer two pathetic little concerts. This plan is so embarrasingly conceived. The utter mediocrity of the current CEO and AD continues to shine with their minor little semi-staged junk at the epic Coliseum. And yes it’s sweet to see the critics suddenly throw 4/5 stars at the company no matter how weak the work: but all too late. The ACE need to finish what they began: close ENO, close WNO, combine with ON and make one healthy GIANT company with full time orchestra and chorus that can travel the UK and display the TRUE FULL power that only grand opera can do. These tiny ideas from tiny minded people …. Next please.
The more I hear of ENO’s plans, the more I feel that they represent the worst of both worlds. Jenny Mollica did her best to sound upbeat when interviewed by Evan Davies on PM on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday (starting at 17’ 48”, if you care to listen on the iPlayer), but failed to convince me that ENO has a robust strategy for operating in two cities 200 miles apart.
Actually, I doubt whether such a strategy could be constructed, but I don’t suppose that Arts Council England gave much thought to that when they bullied ENO into the current dire situation. For example , did anyone look at other opera companies that operate in more than one location? Deutsche Oper am Rhein performs in Duisburg and Düsseldorf, but those cities are 15 minutes apart by train. In contrast, London-based musicians performing in Greater Manchester will find it virtually impossible to get home after evening performances – so more stress and more expense.
Sadly, there’s no easy solution. The process is now under way: ACE has made ENO’s bed, and someone will soon have to lie on it.
So, chamber opera with freelancers in Manchester. Outreach projects and edgy stuff in weird venues.
‘Grand’ opera in London, with a significant scaling back of the already-reduced ENO season, using a freelance chorus and orchestra.
Good to hear that there’s the possibility of adding some more full-time admin jobs in Manchester though, eh?
The whole Western world is rapidly becoming a cultural desert! Bitterly ironic that, as we willfully jettison and vandalise our wonderfully rich artistic heritage, China is actually increasingly embracing and nurturing it, by supporting music through increasing perfornance/training resources. A truly shameful state of affairs!
Sounds exactly like the devolution on New York City Opera. Sad.