For an organisation so full of surprises – one day on funding, another on restricting free speech – Arts Council England remains remarkably consistent on one point: like many people, it just can’t be doing with opera. Or not, anyway, with most of what’s on offer, what with its unlikely heroics and seducers and obsession with “good” singing.
Can you believe, ACE offers in a new report about opera in England (“Let’s Create: Opera and Music Theatre Analysis”), which follows on from its opening assault on opera in 2022, how much of the most frequently staged repertory was written over 100 years ago? By literally dead people?
