ENO draws singer wrath with unfunny Insta posts
OperaWhat were English National Opera chiefs thinking when they approved a run of Instagram posts that reduce the art form to puerile mockery?
The posts are neither funny nor intelligent. Several singers are expressing rage. The rest of us are just bemused.
See for yourselves.
No sensible business would ever trash its suppliers in the hope of attracting new customers.
Susan Bullock, an ENO board member, writes:
Who is writing this garbage and is no one there capable of realising this is utter trash? Clearly not . It makes my heart break.
Darrey Jeffrey, bass-baritone: This an Instagram post (now removed) from my National opera company. Maybe they should read their own hype. Opera of the highest quality doesn’t come from singers who ‘hijack the stage’ with overly inflated egos, ‘dramatically flinging their arms around’ whilst reading from a ‘little book of words’. Well done English National Opera, you have demeaned all of the artists who have worked their entire careers to hone skills, adapt, grow and learn, spending many thousands of hours doing so, for you to belittle everything we do. WE do aim to bring the highest quality opera alive on the Coliseum stage. It’s a shame you don’t see it that way. I hope that I will be introduced to those responsible for this utter garbage on my next visit.
Soraya Maria: WHAT is going on?!?!
I was a Harewood Artist at ENO and have been asked to promote their young artist programme, and help it to gain support, and then the marketing team post this.
There’s a sense of humour and then there is sabotage.
Marketing in opera, particularly in the UK is all over the place.
I was so impressed by the marketing at Irish National Opera from the get go, and it led to sell out shows – a 2,000 seater theatre packed to the rafters with audience members of all ages.
STOP ASSUMING THAT AUDIENCES DON’T LIKE OPERA.
And plenty more.
Yet another company where the work of the singer is not important or recognised as a crucial part of the art form. Opera in 2024.
They should have included a post about Administration and executives – where a group of people continue to draw a salary while the self-employed people who create the art form are treated like excrement.
I’m in two minds. This is Instagram not the ENO website. That gainsaid, a parallel serious explanation would be welcome.
And please give credit for the upcoming
https://www.eno.org/whats-on/mary-queen-of-scots/
Thea Musgrave production of “Mary Queen of Scots”. Now that is innovative.
I think it’s the first time in almost 50 years since its premiere that Musgrave’s opera will be staged in the UK, correct?
Not only is it utterly lame, the execution is appalling.
This is a national opera company, consistently producing marketing materials at the quality of a poorly run university opera society. Baffling.
Shut them down, redistribute the funding to companies with an output of actual artistic merit, and prosecute the management/board AND FORMER management who brought it to this.
You can start with the charlatan who’s now destroying garsington.
Question: “What were English National Opera chiefs thinking when they approved a run of Instagram posts that reduce the art form to puerile mockery?”
Answer: They were not thinking at all. That’s what they are paid not to do.
Let’s be grateful for that. If they started thinking, the damage would be far worse.
Maybe they had been watching “Slings & Arrows”… In any case, appalling is the operative word.
Tried to look edgy and failed miserably.
No comedic talent whatsoever.
Eno is a sodium bicarbonate-based antiacid brand in the marked since around 1852. It neutralizes stomach acidity, in this way relieving heartburn. I has been very popular, indeed, in the management of hangover, in spite of promoting constipation in part of the public. Today the public is more interested in proton-pump inhibitors, which are much more effective.
So, several singers have no sense of humour. No doubt they would be even more outraged at Anna Russell.
ENO’s had excellent social media for a while. Unsurprisingly it’s not aimed at readers of this website.
The problem with ENO’s social media is consistency – half of it is kinda cringey yas queen millennial memes, the other half is overly sincere stuff about ‘creating extraordinary encounters with opera’. Those changes in tone will give you whiplash.
I cannot recall EVER having such a strong feeling of “What WERE they thinking?”
Coincidentally, sorting out my basement yesterday, I came across booklets ENO put out for (a) the first two opening seasons as ENO and (b) the Goodall Ring at the Coli.
Such happy memories revived and such utter misery about what ENO has become recently.