People’s Opera opens fast track for celebrity guests
mainThe eternally troubled English National Opera disgraced itself further last night by cordoning off one entrance channel for invited guests and shoving the mob in through the other.
As if that was not inept enough, ENO chiefs then offended the upper crust by pouring mock champagne. They can’t afford the real stuff.
In other ENO news, we hear they have appointed an artistic director, name tba.
Mock champagne, tut tut…. this is a new low. At least you are guaranteed some decent Moet or somesuch Froggy bubbles at the Garden.
Disgraceful. It brings me back to my early and impoverished days of opera attendance. Those of us with the cheapest seats at both the Coli and the Garden had to enter through a ‘poor door’ round the side.
I’ll tell you a funny thing. I’ve been attending opera in London since the mid 1980s and I can recall many more memorable evenings at ENO than at Covent Garden. Never more memorable than the ending of act two of the Cunning Little Vixen or Handel’s Alcina.
I’m inclined to agree. Decades on, the Goodall Ring, the Miller Rigoletto, the Copley Carmen are still fresh in my mind. I saw many perfectly competent performances at the Garden, but Vickers singing Tristan is the only one (actually several) which stands out on my memory as much as the ENO ones cited.
Vickers in Tristan certainly. But ?Kleiber, Domingo, M Price in Otello; Bohm conducting Figaro – just 2 more astonishing evenings which immediately spring to mind.
I was enraged and disgusted by the red carpet, the ‘celebrities’ on freebies quaffing champagne etc. The TONE so wrong for ENO, which needs to reach out to ‘ordinary’ people
I am often outraged reading your so-called ‘reviews’. You have the gall to talk about tone. Please crawl back to your hole and shut up.
Oh my goodness! I’m sorry to have offended you to such a degree. But are we one the same side here? Is the red-carpet celebrity thing right for ENO or not?
ffs: if you cannot conduct yourself civilly, would it not be a good idea for you to refrain from comment? Or would that be asking too much ?