English National Opera

The London Coliseum, home of English National Opera

English National Opera (ENO) is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden.

The company's origins were in the late 19th century, when the philanthropist Emma Cons, later assisted by her niece Lilian Baylis, put on theatrical and operatic performances at the Old Vic in a rough area of London for the benefit of local people. From those modest beginnings, Baylis built up both the opera and the theatre companies, and later a ballet company, which were the genesis of the ENO, the Royal National Theatre, and the Royal Ballet.

Baylis acquired and rebuilt Sadler's Wells theatre in north London, a larger house, better suited to opera than the Old Vic. The opera company grew there into a permanent ensemble in the 1930s. During the Second World War the theatre was closed and the company toured British towns and cities. After the war the company returned to its home, but it continued to expand and improve, and by the 1960s a larger theatre was needed. In 1968, Sadler's Wells Opera moved to the London Coliseum in the heart of London. In 1974 it adopted the name English National Opera (ENO). The company has survived several attempts to merge it with the Royal Opera.

Among the conductors associated with the company have been Colin Davis, Reginald Goodall, Charles Mackerras, Mark Elder and Edward Gardner. ENO is known for its emphasis on the dramatic aspect of opera, with productions, sometimes controversial, by directors including David Pountney, Jonathan Miller, Nicholas Hytner, Phyllida Lloyd and Calixto Bieito. In addition to the core operatic repertoire ENO has presented a wide range of works, from early operas by Monteverdi, to new commissions, to operetta and Broadway shows.

History

Foundations

Emma Cons

In 1889, Emma Cons, a Victorian philanthropist who ran the Old Vic theatre in a working-class area of London, began presenting regular fortnightly performances of opera excerpts. Although the theatre licensing laws of the day prevented full costumed performances, Cons presented her public with condensed versions of major operas, always sung in English, including Il trovatore. Among the performers were well known singers including Charles Santley. These operatic evenings quickly became more popular than the drama that Cons had been staging. In 1898, she recruited her niece Lilian Baylis to help run the theatre. At the same time she appointed Charles Corri as the Old Vic's musical director. Baylis and Corri, despite many disagreements, shared a passionate belief in popularising opera, hitherto generally the preserve of the rich and fashionable. They worked on a tiny budget, with an amateur chorus and a professional orchestra of only 18 players, for whom Corri rescored the instrumental parts of the operas. By the early years of the 20th century, the Old Vic was able to present semi-staged versions of Wagner operas.

Emma Cons died in 1912, leaving her estate including the Old Vic to Baylis, who dreamed of transforming the theatre into a "people's opera house". In the same year, the theatre licensing laws were amended, allowing theatres including the Old Vic to stage full performances of operas. In the 1914–15 season, Baylis staged 16 operas, as well as 16 plays (13 of which were by Shakespeare). In the years after the First World War, Baylis's Shakespearean productions, which starred some of the leading actors from London's West End, attracted national attention, as her shoe-string opera productions did not, but the opera remained her first priority. The actor-manager Robert Atkins who worked closely with Baylis on her Shakespearean productions recalled, "Opera, on Thursday and Saturday nights, played to bulging houses."

Vic-Wells

The old Sadler's Wells theatre

By the 1920s it was clear to Baylis that the Old Vic no longer sufficed to house both her theatre and her opera companies. She noticed the empty and derelict Sadler's Wells theatre in Rosebery Avenue, Islington on the other side of London from the Old Vic, and conceived the ambition to run it in tandem with her existing theatre.

Baylis set up a public appeal for funds in 1925, and with the help of the Carnegie Trust and many others acquired the freehold of Sadler's Wells. Work started on the site in 1926 and by Christmas 1930 a completely rebuilt theatre seating 1,640 was ready for occupation. The first production there, a fortnight's run from 6 January 1931, was Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The first opera, given on 20 January, was Carmen. Eighteen operas were staged during the first season.

The new theatre was more expensive to run than the Old Vic; a larger orchestra and more singers were needed, and box office receipts were at first inadequate. In 1932, a British newspaper commented that the Vic-Wells opera performances did not reach the standards of the Vic-Wells Shakespeare productions. Baylis strove to improve operatic standards, while at the same time fending off attempts by Sir Thomas Beecham to absorb the opera company into a joint enterprise with Covent Garden, where he was in command. She was at first tempted by the financial security the proposal seemed to offer, but was convinced by her friends and advisers including Edward J. Dent and Clive Carey that it was not in the interests of her regular audience. This view received strong support from the press; The Times wrote, "The Old Vic began by offering opera of some sort to people who hardly knew what the word meant … under a wise, fostering guidance it has gradually worked upwards …Any kind of amalgamation which made it the poor relation of the 'Grand' season would be disastrous."

Lilian Baylis

At first Baylis presented both drama and opera at each of her theatres, but, for both aesthetic and financial reasons, by 1934 the Old Vic had become the home of the spoken drama and Sadler's Wells of the opera, and of the ballet company, founded by Baylis and Ninette de Valois in 1930. Lawrance Collingwood joined Corri as resident conductor, and with the increased number of productions, guest conductors were recruited, including Geoffrey Toye and Anthony Collins. The increasing success of the new ballet company helped to subsidise the high cost of opera productions, enabling a further increase in the size of the orchestra, to 48 players. The singers in the opera company included Joan Cross and Edith Coates. In the 1930s, the company presented standard repertoire works including operas by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Puccini, lighter works by Balfe, Donizetti, Offenbach and Johann Strauss, some novelties including operas by Holst, Ethel Smyth and Charles Villiers Stanford, and an unusual attempt at staging an oratorio, Mendelssohn's Elijah.

In November 1937 Baylis died of a heart attack. Her three companies continued under the direction of her appointees, Tyrone Guthrie at the Old Vic, in overall charge of both theatres, with de Valois running the ballet, and Carey and two colleagues running the opera. In the Second World War the government requisitioned Sadler's Wells as a refuge for those made homeless by air-raids. Guthrie decided to keep the opera going as a small touring ensemble of 20 performers. Between 1942 and the end of the war the company toured continuously, visiting 87 venues. It was led by Joan Cross, who managed the company and when necessary sang leading soprano roles in its productions. The size of the company was increased to 50 and then to 80. By 1945 its members included singers from a new generation such as Peter Pears and Owen Brannigan, and the conductor Reginald Goodall.

Sadler's Wells Opera

Covent Garden – rival and potential senior partner

As the war drew to an end, the government considered the future of opera in Britain. Like Sadler's Wells, the Royal Opera House had presented no opera or ballet since 1939. The Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), the official body charged with dispensing the modest public subsidy recently introduced, considered its options and concluded that a new Covent Garden company should be established. It was to be a year-round, permanent ensemble, singing in English, instead of the short, starry international seasons of pre-war years. Many saw this as an opportunity to merge the two companies, as the modus operandi of the new Covent Garden company was no longer incompatible with that of Sadler's Wells. However, David Webster, who was appointed to run Covent Garden, though keen to secure de Valois' ballet company for Covent Garden, did not want the Sadler's Wells opera company. To him the old company was worthy but "dowdy" and "stodgy". Even with a similar policy of singing in English, he believed he could assemble a better company. The management of Sadler's Wells was unwilling to lose its company's name and tradition. It was agreed that the two companies should co-exist.

Having survived that threat, the continued existence of Sadler's Wells Opera was put into jeopardy by internal divisions. Cross announced her intention to re-open Sadler's Well theatre with Peter Grimes by the young Benjamin Britten with herself and Pears in the leading roles; there were many complaints from company members about supposed favouritism and the "cacophony" of Britten's score. Peter Grimes opened in June 1945 and was hailed by public and critics, but the rift within the company was irreparable; Cross, Britten and Pears severed their ties with Sadler's Wells in December 1945 and founded the English Opera Group. The departure of the ballet company to Covent Garden two months later deprived Sadler's Wells of a vital source of income; the ballet had been profitable and had since its inception subsidised the opera company.

Clive Carey, who had been in Australia during the war, was brought back to replace Joan Cross and rebuild the company after its wartime privations and recent departures. The critic Philip Hope-Wallace wrote in 1946 that Carey had begun to make a difference, but that Sadler's Wells needed "a big heave to get out of mediocrity". In the same year The Times Literary Supplement asked whether the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells companies would stick modestly to their old bases "or shall they boldly embrace the ideal of a National Theatre and a National Opera in English?" Carey left in 1947 and his place at the head of the company was taken in January 1948 by a triumvirate comprising James Robertson as musical director, Michael Mudie as his assistant conductor and Norman Tucker in charge of administration. From October 1948, Tucker was given sole control. Mudie became ill, and the young Charles Mackerras was appointed to cover for him.

Money continued to be a problem. By 1950, Sadler's Wells was receiving a public subsidy of £40,000 a year; Covent Garden received £145,000. Tucker had to give up the option of staging the premiere of Britten's Billy Budd, lacking the resources to do it justice. He was keen to improve the dramatic aspects of opera production, and eminent theatrical directors including Michel Saint-Denis, George Devine and Glen Byam Shaw worked on Sadler's Wells productions in the 1950s. New repertoire was explored; at Mackerras's urging Janáček's Káťa Kabanová was presented for the first time in Britain. Standards and company morale were improving; The Manchester Guardian summed up the 1950–51 London opera season as "Excitement at Sadler's Wells: Lack of Distinction at Covent Garden" and judged Sadler's Wells to have moved "into the front rank of opera houses".

The company continued to leave Roseberry Avenue for summer tours to British cities and towns. The Arts Council (successor to CEMA) was sensitive to the charge that since 1945 the provinces were far less well provided with opera than during the war. The small Carl Rosa Opera Company toured constantly, but the Covent Garden company visited only those few cities with theatres big enough to accommodate it. In the mid-1950s renewed calls were made for a reorganisation of Britain's opera companies. There were proposals for a new home for Sadler's Wells on the South Bank of the Thames near the Royal Festival Hall, but these fell through because the government was unwilling to fund the building. Once again there was serious talk of merging Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells. The management of the latter countered by proposing a closer working arrangement with Carl Rosa. When it became clear that this would require the Sadler's Wells company to tour for 30 weeks every year, and practically destroy its presence on the London opera scene, Tucker, his deputy Stephen Arlen and his musical director Alexander Gibson resigned. The proposals were modified and the three withdrew their resignations. In 1958, the Carl Rosa Company was wound up, and Sadler's Wells took over some of its members and many of its touring dates, setting up "two interchangeable companies of equal standing".

Colin Davis, musical director, 1961–65

By the late 1950s, Covent Garden was gradually abandoning its policy of productions in the vernacular; such stars as Maria Callas would not relearn their roles in English. This made it easier for Tucker to point up the difference between the two London opera companies. While Covent Garden engaged international stars, Sadler's Wells focused on young British and Commonwealth performers. Colin Davis was appointed musical director in succession to Gibson in 1961. The repertoire continued to mix the staples and the unfamiliar. Novelties in Davis's time included Pizzetti's Murder in the Cathedral, Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, Richard Rodney Bennett's The Mines of Sulphur and more Janáček. The traditional policy of giving all operas in English continued, with only two exceptions: Oedipus Rex, which was sung in Latin, and Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, sung in Italian, for reasons not clear to the press. In January 1962, the company gave its first Gilbert and Sullivan opera, Iolanthe; it opened on the day on which the operas came out of copyright and the D'Oyly Carte monopoly ended. It was well received (it was successfully revived for many seasons until 1978) and was followed by a new production of The Mikado in May of the same year.

The Islington theatre was by now clearly too small to allow the company to achieve any further growth. A study conducted for the Arts Council gave the following statistics about Sadler's Wells in the late 1960s: 44 principals on annual contracts, 62 guest singers, two choruses of 48, two opera-ballet dancing ensembles of 12, and two orchestras of 57 players. The company had experience of playing in a large West End theatre; in 1958 its sell-out production of The Merry Widow had transferred to the 2,351-seat London Coliseum for a summer season. Ten years later the lease of the Coliseum became available; Stephen Arlen, who had succeeded Tucker as managing director, was the driving force behind moving the company. After intense negotiations and fund-raising, a ten-year lease was signed in 1968.

One of the company's last productions at the Islington theatre was Wagner's The Mastersingers, conducted by Goodall in 1968, which 40 years later was described by Gramophone magazine as "legendary". The company left Sadler's Wells with a revival of the work with which it had re-opened the theatre in 1945, Peter Grimes. Its last performance at Rosebery Avenue was on 15 June 1968.

Coliseum

London Coliseum

The company, retaining the title "Sadler's Wells Opera", opened at the Coliseum on 21 August 1968, with a new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, directed by Sir John Gielgud. That production was not well received, but the company rapidly established itself with a succession of highly praised productions. Stephen Arlen died in January 1972, and was succeeded as managing director by Lord Harewood.

The success of the 1968 Mastersingers was followed in the 1970s by the company's first Ring cycle, conducted by Goodall, with a cast including Norman Bailey, Rita Hunter and Alberto Remedios. The cycle had a new translation by Andrew Porter, and designs by Ralph Koltai. Looking back at the first ten years at the Coliseum in 1978, Harewood picked out as highlights the Ring, Prokofiev's War and Peace, and Richard Strauss's Salome and Der Rosenkavalier.

The company's musical director from 1970 to 1977, and principal guest conductor from 1978 to 1983, was Sir Charles Mackerras. He was an exceptionally versatile conductor; Harewood praised his range "from The House of the Dead to Patience." The critic Alan Blyth described him as an expert on authenticity in performing Handel, a pioneer of Janáček, "a scholarly Mozartian … a sure advocate of French opera, a strong, no-nonsense interpreter of the Viennese classics, an expert in early 19th-century operas by Donizetti and others, and an abiding admirer of Gilbert and Sullivan". Among the operas he conducted for the company were Handel's Julius Caesar starring Janet Baker and Valerie Masterson; five Janáček operas; The Marriage of Figaro with pioneering use of 18th century performing style; Massenet's Werther; Donizetti's Mary Stuart with Baker; and Sullivan's Patience. Mackerras took the production of the last to the Vienna Festival in 1975, along with Britten's Gloriana. He also conducted the company in performances of Gloriana and Patience at the Proms in London in 1973 and 1976 respectively. Mackerras was succeeded by Sir Charles Groves, who was unwell and unhappy during his brief tenure in 1978–79. Groves was relieved to hand over to Mark Elder, who found him "immensely encouraging and supportive".

From the outset, Arlen and then Harewood had wanted to change the company's name to reflect the fact that it was no longer based at Sadler's Wells theatre. Byam Shaw commented, "The one major setback the Sadler's Wells Opera Company suffered from its transplant was that unheeding taxi drivers kept on taking their patrons up to Rosebery Avenue" Harewood considered it an elementary rule that "you must not carry the name of one theatre if you are playing in another one." Covent Garden, protective of its status, objected to the suggestion that the Sadler's Wells company should be called "The British National Opera" or "The National Opera", although neither Scottish Opera nor the Welsh National Opera opposed such a change. Eventually the matter was decided by the British government, and the title "English National Opera" was approved. It was adopted by the company's board in November 1974.

ENO

1980–1999

In 1982, at Elder's urging, Harewood appointed David Pountney director of productions. In 1985 Harewood retired (becoming chairman of ENO's board the following year) and Peter Jonas succeeded him as managing director. The 1980s triumvirate of Elder, Pountney and Jonas initiated a new era of "director's opera". They favoured productions described by Elder as "groundbreaking, risky, probing and theatrically effective" and by the director Nicholas Hytner as "Euro-bollocks that never has to be comprehensible to anybody but the people sitting out there conceiving." Directors who did not, in Harewood's phrase, "want to splash paint in the face of the public" were sidelined. A survey in the 1980s showed that the two things that ENO audiences most disliked were poor diction and the extremes of "producer's opera". Poor audience figures led to a financial crisis, which was exacerbated by backstage industrial relations problems.

Productions during the 1980s included the company's first productions of Pelléas and Mélisande (1981), Parsifal (1986) and Billy Budd (1988), and productions that remained in the repertory for many years, such as Xerxes directed by Hytner, and Rigoletto and The Mikado directed by Miller. In 1984 ENO toured the United States; the travelling company, led by Elder, consisted of 360 people; they performed Gloriana, War and Peace, The Turn of the Screw, Rigoletto and Patience. This was the first British company to be invited to appear at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, where Patience received a standing ovation, and Rigoletto, directed by Jonathan Miller depicting the characters as mafiosi, was greeted with a mixture of enthusiasm and booing.

In 1990 ENO was the first major foreign opera company to tour the former Soviet Union, performing the Miller production of The Turn of the Screw, Pountney's production of Macbeth, and Hytner's much-revived Xerxes. The Elder, Pountney and Jonas era, often called the "Powerhouse" era, ended in 1992, when all three left at the same time. The new general director was Dennis Marks, formerly head of music programmes at the BBC; the new music director was Sîan Edwards; Pountney's post of director of productions was not filled. Marks, inheriting a large financial deficit from his predecessor, worked to restore the company's finances, concentrating on restoring ticket sales to sustainable levels. A new production by Miller of Der Rosenkavalier was a critical and financial success, as was a staging of Massenet's Don Quixote, described by the critic Hugh Canning as "the kind of magic that the hair-shirted Powerhouse regime despised". Marks was obliged to spend much time and effort to secure funding for an essential restoration of the Coliseum, a condition on which ENO had acquired the freehold of the theatre in 1992. At the same time the Arts Council was contemplating a cut in the number of opera performances in London, at the expense of ENO, rather than Covent Garden. By increasing ticket sales in successive years, Marks demonstrated that the Arts Council's proposition was unrealistic. After what The Independent described as "a sustained period of criticism and sniping at the ENO by music critics", Sîan Edwards resigned as music director at the end of 1995; she was succeeded by Paul Daniel. In 1997, Marks resigned. No reason was announced, but it was thought that he and the ENO board had disagreed about his plans to move the company from the Coliseum to a purpose-built new home. Daniel took over the management of the company until a new general director was appointed.

Daniel inherited from Marks a company thriving artistically and financially. The 1997–98 season played to 75 per cent capacity and made a surplus of £150,000. Daniel led the campaign against yet another proposal to merge Covent Garden and ENO, which was rapidly abandoned. In 1998 Nicholas Payne, director of opera at Covent Garden, was appointed to the post of ENO general director.

Productions in the 1990s included the company's first stagings of Beatrice and Benedict (1990), Wozzeck (1991), Jenůfa (1994), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1995), Die Soldaten (1996), and Dialogues of the Carmelites (1999). Co-productions, enabling opera houses to share the costs of joint enterprises, became important in this decade; in 1993 ENO and Welsh National Opera collaborated on productions of Don Pasquale, Ariodante and The Two Widows.

21st century

The aim must be to create a new audience that does not see opera as a middle class trophy art form.

Director Tim Albery and colleagues

Operagoers want to hear great singing and orchestral playing presented in the context of a work's ethos rather than in some form only comprehended by the director.

Critic Alan Blyth

Martin Smith, a millionaire with a finance background, was appointed chairman of the ENO board in 2001. He proved to be an expert fund-raiser, and personally donated a million pounds to the cost of refurbishing the Coliseum. He and Payne came into conflict over the effect on revenue of the "director's opera" productions that Payne insisted on commissioning. The most extreme case was a production of Don Giovanni directed by Calixto Bieito in 2001, loathed by critics and public alike, and condemned as "a new nadir in vulgar abuse of a masterpiece." Payne remained adamant that opera lovers who came to the ENO for a "nice, pleasant evening … had come to the wrong place." Their differences were irreconcilable and Payne was forced to resign.

Payne's successor was Sean Doran, whose appointment was controversial because he had no experience of running an opera company. One of his notable achievements was a performance of the third act of The Valkyrie at the Glastonbury Festival. However, low box-office returns and critical reviews of the ENO Ring cycle during the early part of his tenure contributed to his difficulties. In December 2003 Daniel announced that he would leave at the end of his contract in 2005. Oleg Caetani was announced as the next music director, from January 2006.

In 2004 the company embarked on its second production of Wagner's Ring. After concert performances over the previous three seasons, the cycle was staged at the Coliseum in 2004 and 2005 in a production by Phyllida Lloyd, with designs by Richard Hudson, in a new translation by Jeremy Sams. The first instalments of the cycle were criticised as poorly sung and conducted, but by the time Twilight of the Gods was staged in 2005, matters were thought to have improved: "Paul Daniel’s command of the score is more authoritative than could have been predicted from his uneven accounts of the previous operas." The production attracted generally bad notices. The four operas were given individual runs, but were never played as a complete cycle.

During the first decade of the century, the company repeated the experiment, first tried in 1932, of staging oratorios and other choral works as operatic performances. Bach's St. John Passion was given in 2000, followed by Verdi's Requiem (2000), Tippett's A Child of Our Time (2005) and Handel's Jephtha (2005). ENO provided for the increased interest in Handel's operas, staging Alcina (2002), Agrippina (2006) and Partenope (2008). In 2004 the company staged its first production of Berlioz's massive opera The Trojans, with Sarah Connolly as "a supremely eloquent, genuinely tragic Dido".

In 2005, after an internal debate that had been going on since 1991, it was announced that surtitles would be introduced at the Coliseum. Surveys had shown that only a quarter of audience members could hear the words clearly. With a few exceptions including Lesley Garrett and Andrew Shore, ENO singers of the 21st century were considered to have poorer diction than their predecessors such as Masterson and Derek Hammond-Stroud. Harewood and Pountney had been immovably opposed to surtitles; both believed that opera in English was pointless if it could not be understood; Harewood thought, moreover, that surtitles could undermine the case for a publicly-funded opera-in-English company. The editor of Opera magazine, Rodney Milnes, campaigned against surtitles on the grounds that "singers would give up trying to articulate clearly and audiences would cease focusing on the stage". Despite these objections surtitles were introduced from October 2005.

On 29 November 2005, Doran resigned as artistic director. To replace him, Smith divided the duties between Loretta Tomasi as chief executive and John Berry as artistic director. These elevations from within the organisation were controversial, because they were neither advertised nor cleared at the top level of the Arts Council. Smith received severe press criticism for his action, and in December 2005 he announced his resignation. In the same week, Caetani's appointment as the next ENO Music Director was cancelled. Berry was at first criticised in the press for his choice of singers for ENO productions, but the appointment of Edward Gardner from 2007 was widely praised. The Observer commented that Gardner was "widely credited with breathing fresh life into English National Opera, whose growing reputation under his youthfully innovative hand has seen the house ally itself with outside talent, from Anthony Minghella's hugely popular Madam Butterfly to Forced Entertainment's production of Philip Glass's Satyagraha. Attendance figures recovered, with younger audiences attracted by ENO's marketing schemes. The company's finances improved, with £5 million in reserve funds in April 2009.

Repertoire

The company has aimed to present the standard operatic repertoire, sung in English, and has presented all the major operas of Mozart, Wagner and Puccini, and a wide range of Verdi's operas. Under Mackerras and his successors, the Czech repertoire had been well represented, and a representative range of French and Russian operas has been presented. The company has for decades laid stress on opera as drama, and has avoided operas where vocal display takes precedence over musical and dramatic content. In addition to the operatic staples, ENO has a history of presenting new works, and latterly of commissioning them.

Premieres and commissions

Among the world premieres given by Sadler's Wells and ENO are Peter Grimes (1945), The Mines of Sulphur (1965), The Mask of Orpheus (1986), and The Silver Tassie (1999). British stage premieres include the original Mussorgsky version of Boris Godunov (1935), Simon Boccanegra (1948), Káťa Kabanová (1951), Oedipus Rex (1960), The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1963), The Makropoulos Case (1964), War and Peace (1972), The Adventures of Mr Brouček (1978), Akhnaten (1985), and Doctor Atomic (2009).

ENO's commissions, some of them jointly with other companies, include The Story of Vasco (Gordon Crosse, 1974), Anna Karenina (Iain Hamilton, 1981), The Plumber's Gift (David Blake, 1989), The Bacchae (John Buller, 1992), Inquest of Love (Jonathan Harvey, 1993), Life with an Idiot (Alfred Schnittke, 1995, co-commission), Doctor Ox's Experiment (Gavin Bryars, 1998, co-commissioned with the BBC), From Morning to Midnight (David Sawer, 2001), A Better Place (Martin Butler, 2001), The Early Earth Operas (2004), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Gerald Barry, 2005) (co-commissioned with RTÉ), Gaddafi: A Living Myth (Asian Dub Foundation, 2006), and Two Boys (Nico Muhly, 2011, co-commissioned with the Metropolitan Opera, New York).

Operetta and musicals

From the beginning the company interspersed serious opera with lighter works. In the early years the "Irish Ring" (The Bohemian Girl, The Lily of Killarney and Maritana) featured in Old Vic and Sadler's Wells seasons. After the Second World War, the company began to programme operetta, including The Merry Widow (1958), Die Fledermaus (1958), Orpheus in the Underworld (1960), Merrie England (1960), La vie parisienne (1961), La belle Hélène (1963), and The Gipsy Baron (1964).

In 1962, the company staged its first production of a Savoy opera, with Iolanthe, shortly followed by The Mikado. Patience in 1969, was much revived in London and on tour in the UK, the U.S. and on the continent. A second production of The Mikado in 1986 starred the comedian Eric Idle in a setting moved to a 1920s English seaside hotel. It was regularly revived over 25 years. A 1992 production of Princess Ida directed by Ken Russell was a critical and box office disaster, ran briefly, and was not revived. The Pirates of Penzance was produced in 2005. A highly-coloured production of The Gondoliers opened in 2006; the press pointed out that diction had declined to the point that the recently introduced surtitles were essential.

From the 1980s the company has experimented with Broadway shows, including Pacific Overtures (1987), Street Scene (1898), On the Town (2005), and Kismet (2007). In many of ENO's lighter shows, the size of the Coliseum has been a problem, both in putting across shows written for much more intimate theatres and in selling enough tickets.

Education

In 1966, under the company's head of design Margaret Harris, Sadler's Wells Theatre Design Course was founded; it later became Motley Theatre Design Course. ENO Baylis, founded in 1985, is the education department of ENO; it aims to introduce new audiences to opera and "to deepen and enrich the experience of current audiences in an adventurous, creative and engaging manner." The programme offers training for students and young professionals, and workshops, commissions, talks and debates.

Musical directors

• Charles Corri (1898–1935)
• Lawrance Collingwood (chief conductor, 1931–1941, musical director 1941–1946)
• James Robertson (1946–1954)
• Alexander Gibson (1957–1959)
• Colin Davis (1961–1965)
• Mario Bernardi (1966–1968) and Bryan Balkwill (1966–1969), joint musical directors
• Charles Mackerras (1970–1977)
• Sir Charles Groves (1978–1979)
• Mark Elder (1979–1993) (title changed to "music director" in 1979 and thereafter)
• Sîan Edwards (1993–1997)
• Paul Daniel (1997–2005)
• Edward Gardner (2007–)

Notes and references

Notes

References

Sources

• Blyth, Alan (1972). Colin Davis. London: Ian Allan. OCLC 641971554.
• Conrad, Peter. A Song of Love and Death – The Meaning of Opera. London: Chatto and Windus. ISBN 0701132744.
• Cox, David (1980). The Henry Wood Proms. London: BBC. ISBN 0563176970.
• Gilbert, Susie (2009). Opera for Everybody. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 9780571224937.
• Goodman, Lord (1969). A Report on Opera and Ballet in the United Kingdon, 1966–69. London: Arts Council of Great Britain. OCLC 81272. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Haltrecht, Montague (1975). The Quiet Showman: Sir David Webster and the Royal Opera House. London: Collins. ISBN 0-00-211163-2.

External links

• ENO website
• ENO history