To say that it has been a bumpy ride is an understatement – but oddly enough, English National Opera is back where it was in November 2022, when it was told that it would lose its entire government grant unless it moved outside London, probably to Manchester. That was the indirect result of then culture secretary Nadine Dorries’ insistence that millions of pounds of arts funding be transferred out of the capital as part of the Conservative government’s levelling-up agenda.
But it will be a very different company. While it will continue to stage some full-scale work in its London home, in Greater Manchester it will collaborate with venues and organisations across the city to make new kinds of operatic work at different scales. It has lost its stalwart music director, the conductor Martyn Brabbins, who resigned this autumn in the wake of proposals to abolish 19 posts at ENO’s orchestra and re-employ the other musicians part-time, and make cuts to the chorus, as part of what he called a “plan of managed decline”.
