Job of the Week: ENO seeks CEO
OperaNot for the fainthearted. Possibly written by AI:
English National Opera exists for everyone, creating new experiences with opera that inspires, nurtures creativity and makes a different. Our vision is for lives changed through opera. We take a fresh inspiring approach to opera to reflect the diversity of our culture. The Board of English National Opera is seeking to appoint an experienced, dynamic and resilient leader to take it into its next stage as the company approaches its centenary year.
English National Opera (ENO) is in a period of rapid change following Arts Council (ACE) funding decisions and the requirement for ENO to move its home out of London by 2029. Following a rigorous process, a decision has been made to move to the Greater Manchester area, creating work with and for that area, whilst still retaining a significant annual opera season at the London Coliseum.
A key task of the incoming CEO will be to lead this process, creating a new model of what an opera company can be for the wide range of audiences and communities it serves. The CEO of ENO is also CEO of London Coliseum (LCL) which manages the building and its commercial operation, the profits of which are used, unequivocally, to support the operation of ENO.
The CEO is accountable to and governed by the Board and leads the strategic development and operational executive management of ENO, ensuring good governance and a sustainable business model. The CEO ensures that the company’s work is of the highest artistic, musical and administrative quality, and is accessible to a wide range of audiences and participants, whilst providing a bridge between administrative reality and artistic aspiration.
Please see our Recruitment Pack for further details.
To apply please send your CV with a covering letter and two referees (maximum 2 pages) detailing your interest and suitability for the post to workwithus@eno.org.
“Following a rigorous process, a decision has been made to move to the Greater Manchester area, creating work with and for that area, whilst still retaining a significant annual opera season at the London Coliseum.”
More work with and for that area? What will happen to Opera North, I wonder, and their plans for outreach and touring there? Salford is hardly Greater Manchester like Blackburn or Burnley!
Significant opera season in London? Their season in London has got shorter and shorter.
However short their season in London it will almost certainly longer than the time they are exiled in Gt Manchester. As a proud Mancunian I still can’t get round how patronising and grudging this forced move is. In my view, as forced on us as it is on them. The new CEO will likely have to have ENO’s new ‘home’ pointed out on a map to whoever gets the job. Oh, sorry, it doesn’t actually have a base other than the Coliseum. And no doubt they are still hoping to keep it that way.
Blackburn and Burnley are in Lancashire, not ‘Greater Manchester’.
Poisoned chalice and a half. I doubt any self-respecting intendant would put themselves forward to run this sh*tshow. Better to let Mollica carry on until the dust is well and truly settled. That, or find someone who knows how to proofread communications and can stop the management and board sounding like idiots.
Like telling us that “English National Opera exists for everyone, creating new experiences with opera that inspires, nurtures creativity and makes a different.”
A different what? Subject-verb agreement?
This communiqué reads as if translated from emoji.
More poison than chalice methinks.
Telling that they don’t describe the salary. Maybe they don’t want their ex-orchestra to find that out.
Nonsense – CEO salaries are rarely advertised – bands sometimes given – but current executive salary banding within £10k is publicly available on companies house. There’s a lot of transparency if you do a tiny bit of looking.
No, ‘transparency’ would be Covent Garden’s senior salaries, which are published on Companies House with names and numbers. ENO’s ‘leadership’ is far less forthcoming, for perhaps understandable reasons.
They would be much better served by starting with replacing the Chair and most of the Board. A new CEO is unlikely to achieve very much without such changes, given he’ll have an opera company with a truncated, part time orchestra and chorus and a lot of unhappy people.
“The CEO ensures that the company’s work is of the highest artistic, musical and administrative quality”
I foresee a problem: ‘today’s’ existing musicians are now no longer working – their season is all but over in any practical sense prior to being made redundant; ‘tomorrow’s’ musicians have yet to be hired.
So exactly whose ‘highest musical quality’ is the new CEO to ensure?
I see the Candidate pack has one very important omission: on retirement, the new CEO should be prepared to accept a CBE for ‘services to opera’ !
:/
Usual! Administration thinking themselves above the Artists whom they serve/manage – whereas, now its the other way around.
Look at the orchestras and their inflated numbers in the office.
They’ve learned nothing from their recent travesty by having to leave London for an already operatically well served Manchester.
The dysfunctional management should bow their head in shame for this sad debacle and blot on the dying musical landscape of this once musically glorious UK.
May God help any successful applicant for this poisoned challenge!
Plus the Arts Council of England – a bunch of Philistines who simoly abhor opera. Welsh Opera and Northern Ballet all in a mess too.
And don’t forget the impact to Glyndebourne Touring.
“Resilient” is probably the key word.
Blame this on the philistine Arts Council who’ve made it clear they dislike opera.
A ‘dislike’ shared by Brunjes and most of the board and senior management. The directors are involved solely because they’re social climbers, the senior management because no-one else would over-promote them.
Not so much job of the week as poison chalice of the week.
Their move to Manchester won’t get me to go there. Nothing will.
Your loss.
Well, I’m available. And unlike many, I wouldn’t mind moving to Manchester either. In fact, I’d move there in a heartbeat. It’s a great city.
Do you think the board just want someone to continue the plan to reduce the payroll within a new ‘strategic plan’? (i.e. halving the number of performances and staging commercial work instead, and then commencing ‘consultations’/redundancies across departments, the most recent being the orchestra’s fire and rehire under part-time contracts?) Or has this already been self-destructive enough?
Why board the Titan?
An absolutely thankless job. You’ll please no one. Good luck to whoever applies!
I cannot recommend Simon Webb highly enough for this job!
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