The end of ENO?

[Master Jacques]

Stuart Murphy on R4’s Front Row just now says he won’t up sticks to Manchester, despite ACE’s ‘requirement’ that the company relocates from London in order to retain funding. Murphy will meet with ACE on Thursday - bit like the Gunfight at the OK Corral…

Quite so. This person's ability to change tack with the wind is truly amazing. He's seemingly taken advantage of some of the posts on this thread (!) to come up with some sound bites, as well as those letters to The Times. But ACE is too flimsy and craven to stand up to HM Government, which is why ENO (as well as the touring arms of Glyndebourne and the Welsh National Opera) find themselves trashed. It seems even Murphy has managed to grasp hold of that fact: but with a CEO like this, there is no hope.

[Bryn]

Stuart Murphy on R4’s Front Row just now says he won’t up sticks to Manchester, despite ACE’s ‘requirement’ that the company relocates from London in order to retain funding. Murphy will meet with ACE on Thursday - bit like the Gunfight at the OK Corral…

https://www.eno.org/news/eno-announces-departure-of-stuart-murphy-ceo-in-september-2023/

[Belgrove]

Stuart Murphy on R4’s Front Row just now says he won’t up sticks to Manchester, despite ACE’s ‘requirement’ that the company relocates from London in order to retain funding. Murphy will meet with ACE on Thursday - bit like the Gunfight at the OK Corral…

[LeWoiDeWeigate]

I take your point...

'Very different since the 1980s' then?

Population growth in London has been on a rapid upward trend (1.5% pa) since about 1980 - it was decreasing in the post-war years. Manchester is growing but had been pretty flat post-war and is now at about 0.8% pa.

And yes, it does it appear to be a post-industrial collapse problem.

[Master Jacques]

The truth is that 'levelling-up' is a nonsense because London is and always has been VERY different from the rest of the UK socially, culturally, demographically and it is richer and enriches the rest of the country. The answer is to make London more accessible for those from further afield - much cheaper/more regular trains running 24/7 as the services within London do.

Thank you for your stimulating and thoughtful post. I only want here to question whether London has always been "very different". At various times Manchester, Edinburgh (especially as a literary centre) and Glasgow have set the tone for the United Kingdom, culturally. In opera, all the great singers toured, especially to these other great cities. Where did Malibran die? Where was the English premiere of La boheme staged, conducted by the composer, and in what language? (by his express order!) In the 18th and 19th centuries there was a parity between these cities and London, latterly thanks to the extreme wealth of Manchester and Glasgow, which could afford to spend more on the arts than the British capital, and enthusiastically did so.

The difference comes in with industrial decline. In the 1950s Callas was still singing Tosca in Manchester, but by the 1990s... you are quite right. People should not all have to be ferried down to London to hear an opera. It is all wrong, when they've paid for the Royal Opera same as everyone in Westminster.

[Master Jacques]

The fact is, most English singers aren't very good at singing in their own language, that's why they had to bring in surtitles, so you may as well sing in the original language if you can't understand the words anyway. And some of the translations can be pretty ropey: I remember Kundry's two words in Act 3 sung in English as 'Service. Service', which sounded like she was calling for the waiter. Singing in English is a nice idea in principle but it's often quite awkward in practice.

There is much truth in what you say, but none of it (I think) negates the preferability of doing an opera - any opera - in the vernacular. Singers need to be taught not to sing on those bland, boring Italianate vowel-sounds all the time, because otherwise they'll never develop a musical personality. Surtitles were originally brought in to help the hard of hearing, but I agree that they've not encouraged singers to be understood - any more than have the increased decibels of the overpowered modern orchestra, where instruments have been "improved" to make ever more sound.

Bad translations are bad translations. I agree, "service" is a shocker. What would have been wrong with "serve, serve". It gets the sense across precisely as in the German, and emphasises Kundry's return to the basics of language. But one drenched swallow doesn't make a wet summer. Singing in English can be made to sound more awkward than it is, by bad translators and singers who tackle it as if it were Italian (e.g. RVW's sad but true example, where the tenor came on bellowing "whaa ees ma braad?")

[LeWoiDeWeigate]

...as anyone with a knowledge of the provinces knows...

Exactly so and borne out by the relative sizes of the served audiences alone putting economic differences aside. London equates to about 15m who can easily reach these venues; by comparison, the same quantity for Birmingham is about 4m and Manchester slightly more than 2m.

Couple that with as anyone who regularly travels into London knows, the capital has been clobbered by the economic fall-out of Covid and people simply aren't commuting in anything LIKE the same numbers and the rail services which we relied on have been throttled - my 3 trains/hour with approx 35 minutes journey-time is down to 1 per hour and about 60 minutes; that is if it runs at-all. Many of my 50-something mates have swapped their Gold Card for a house in a village miles from the nearest rural railway station and a Netflix subscription... (I'm looking to downsize and buy in Canada Water to get out of the 'burbs because I'm stuffed-off with Southern/Thameslink).

And I think it is more than the appetite for 'opera' - Wigmore, Cadogan, Kings Place, et al all seem eerily quiet compared to pre-2020. ENO, RoH and Glyndebourne (a London venue that just happens to be in the wrong place) have/had the ability to hold the audience simply due to population.

We then hit the other issue that for 'touring' you need good transport and we only really have one functional international airport in the country (Heathrow) which is well-connected to London but then London is poorly-connected to the other parts of the UK. I'm already seeing other genres of touring musicians cancel gigs in non-London venues simply because they can't get to them AND guarantee the audience.

The truth is that 'levelling-up' is a nonsense because London is and always has been VERY different from the rest of the UK socially, culturally, demographically and it is richer and enriches the rest of the country. The answer is to make London more accessible for those from further afield - much cheaper/more regular trains running 24/7 as the services within London do.

But this doesn't play to the vote-rigging agenda that the Thatcher's Children Tories have...

[Master Jacques]

Borrows it and improves it. Shakespeare was the greatest literary borrower in history ..

I'd query that Falstaff improves The Merry Wives. It streamlines it, turning into a Goldoni farce. Pound for pound, the original text and characters, almost all retained in Vaughan Williams's Sir John in Love, provide at least as good an experience. Parson Hugh, Slender, Rugby, Mine Host of the Garter et al. don't exist in Boito, and Sir John is all the richer for them. We get a sense of a real community, rather than a slick Italian farce. I love both operas of course, but they are chalk and cheese.

[Master Jacques]

My German isn't great but I know enough to appreciate that Wagner was not a great writer of poetry. However, the 'stabreim' is an intrinsic part of the experience, for me. Take it away, and you're left with something that isn't really Wagner (Parsifal's 'so flattertend lachend die Locken!' remains a test case for me). And I don't actually need to follow the plot - most of the time, I'm already familiar with it. As for punchlines - has comic opera ever actually been funny?

You'd presumably prefer the Victorian Ring translations, then, with their attempts to imitate the Stabreim ("nixy nymphs" and all that)? The strength of Andrew Porter's natural translation was that it turned all that arcane declamation into the language of the here and now, going for sense rather than sound. And that's what you get at Bayreuth, too, where the acoustic means it's more like watching a subtle play than being bellowed at in an opera house. (And of course there are no surtitles at Bayreuth, because "he" wouldn't have liked them!)

"Sense or sound" seems to be the issue here. Surely it's not really about following the plot - a quick read of the synopsis gives most people enough of that - as appreciating minute conversational subtleties between characters, which do not register if you're having to mentally translate them into your own language. My brain at least is too slow to do that, especially with Janacek: but then I was brought up on brilliant English translations of his operas, sung under Mackerras, who championed good English Janacek (and Smetana) from first to last. I only think of the Vixen in English, and want the English recording of the Forester's final scene played at my funeral, as the most natural way to do it. And I would say that you cannot possibly appreciate The Makropoulos Case properly, unless you've seen it in English - all that plot gabbling from Kolenaty, for instance.

I'm talking about stage productions, not listening on CD, which is a different experience. Take the penultimate little pub scene in the Vixen. It's the subtext of what's being said by all the characters, all lost in their own mists, which is poignant here, and you simply do not get that by peering up at surtitles and listening to the simple, conversational music. You get it by watching the stage and pondering the words in a language you can understand without having to think about it.

And I won't even begin to relate the pain which having to bear these great operas abroad "in the original" gives to Czech speakers. "Original" is the word, in the sense of like nothing they've ever heard before. No, thank you. As with Wagner and Puccini, I have the composer on my side here too!

I'm reminded of RVW's anecdote about the lady at Covent Garden who waved away the offered libretto - "Oh no, we're not here for any of that, we're here to enjoy the music".

Has comic opera ever been funny? I give you Rossini, Donizetti, Offenbach, J. Strauss, Sullivan, Chueca ... the list is endless. And even here, too many current shows mindlessly stick with doing the musical bits in bad Italian, French, German, or whatever. It just takes singers with reasonable diction and good acting skills - and of course directors who have the expertise to direct comedy. (Ah, I see the weak link here....)

Anyway, that's the reason ENO should have been cherished, over and above the well-endowed Royal Opera. It's done far more for the world over the last 90 years or so, than Covent Garden ever has.

[gurnemanz]

Borrows it and improves it. Shakespeare was the greatest literary borrower in history ..

Quiz question: Which plays' plots did Shakespeare write himself?






Love's Labour's Lost and The Tempest

[Ein Heldenleben]

I'd agree about GS but Falstaff borrows the plot of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Shakespeare was notoriously bad at 'jokes'.

Borrows it and improves it. Shakespeare was the greatest literary borrower in history ..

[ChandlersFord]

Gianni Schicci and Falstaff are both in places laugh out loud funny,,,,

I'd agree about GS but Falstaff borrows the plot of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Shakespeare was notoriously bad at 'jokes'.

[Ein Heldenleben]

My German isn't great but I know enough to appreciate that Wagner was not a great writer of poetry. However, the 'stabreim' is an intrinsic part of the experience, for me. Take it away, and you're left with something that isn't really Wagner (Parsifal's 'so flattertend lachend die Locken!' remains a test case for me). And I don't actually need to follow the plot - most of the time, I'm already familiar with it. As for punchlines - has comic opera ever actually been funny?

Gianni Schicci and Falstaff are both in places laugh out loud funny,,,,

[ChandlersFord]

That's not what surtitles are for - they're for accessibility purposes. The idea that reading a text hoisted high above the stage (taking the eye away from the production and giving away the punchlines in comic opera before they're spoken) does anything for the operatic experience is a curious one. They're anathema for people who care about opera as drama.

This is the oldest argument in the world, but only a side issue here. So I'll content myself with reminding you of one case: following hearing Andrew Porter's English Ring in the 1970s, several German visitors expressed the heartfelt opinion that it ought to be translated into German, to enable them to understand what Wagner's terrible - and infinitely more pompous - text was supposed to mean!

When you've got such a laughably poor, faux-medieval piece of antiquated pomposity to deal with, then translation becomes not an option, but a necessity - and if you think that's strong, you ought to read what RVW said about doing Wagner in German!

My German isn't great but I know enough to appreciate that Wagner was not a great writer of poetry. However, the 'stabreim' is an intrinsic part of the experience, for me. Take it away, and you're left with something that isn't really Wagner (Parsifal's 'so flattertend lachend die Locken!' remains a test case for me). And I don't actually need to follow the plot - most of the time, I'm already familiar with it. As for punchlines - has comic opera ever actually been funny?

[Ein Heldenleben]

I completely agree, slogging up those steps via the tradesmen's entrance was all part of the experience and you felt like you were among people who actually wanted to hear the music and weren't just there on some corporate jolly.

I sort of agree with you. But this might be the only country in the world where we think like that. Must be centuries of Puritanism.
Am I right in remembering that the amphi exiles were not just segregated on entrance but actively prevented from accessing the main house save for the interval dash through the Grand Tier to the Crush Bar?