Unsurprisingly, given its national treasure status and the existential shock of finding that its very survival depended on uprooting itself, discussion of the body blow to opera caused by Arts Council England (ACE) funding cuts has focused on the fate of English National Opera (ENO).
The intention – to force ENO to move from a city that had two opera houses to one that had none – might seem fair enough, in the context of a central government command to shift resources out of the capital. But it backfired badly, by drawing all the attention to one big metropolitan player rather than to the art form it champions. Less headline-hogging cuts to two other leading players, Glyndebourne and the Welsh National Opera, simultaneously forced them to cut back on touring, leaving parts of the country with no opera at all.
