Opinion: Where's the crisis at ENO?

Having been bowled over by the total work of art English National Opera made of Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg on its first night, I bought tickets immediately afterwards for the final performance. So I’m off tonight to catch the farewell of what has been an unqualified triumph for the company. Yet only last Thursday an unsolicited email arrived from Amazon Local – there’s no stopping them, it seems – offering tickets for this very show at 40 per cent discount.

Now, it’s bizarre that, given the high levels of Wagnerolatry in London, any of the composer's operas doesn’t sell out before the run even begins, still more so a production which received five-star plaudits more or less across the board. This is part of the problem for an opera house under strict surveillance from the Arts Council to pull its socks up - and not, the pundits imply, just financially.

Let’s be absolutely clear about this, echoing the recent open letter from 33 international opera-house movers and shakers: there has been no crisis in ENO’s run of productions over the past year and two months, indeed in the bigger picture of the last 10 years In the autumn of 2013 it had the bad luck, or perhaps bad judgment, to run three consecutive turkeys: Calixto Bieito’s Fidelio (pictured above by Tristram Kenton) – atrocious first act, production-wise, with figures lost on a vast set, followed by a second with a couple of the most striking ideas I’ve ever seen on an operatic stage; Christopher Alden’s Fledermaus, possibly a thankless task on an unworkable operetta with superb music; and Complicite’s Magic Flute, which presumably sold well, unlike the other two, and had been praised in a former incarnation but turned out, to massive disappointment all round, drab and lifeless.

2014 began with a certified company gem, the Peter Grimes of the other Alden brother, David, and never fell below a certain level. John Berry had secured Richard Jones for two of his three great new productions seen in the UK during the year, the audacious Rodelinda and the faithful reflection of Puccini’s foolproof stage directions in The Girl of the Golden West. The year came to a stunning close with one of Peter Sellars’ rare hits among recent misses, his first fully-realised staging of inseparable composer-colleague John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary. The company returned after the Christmas and New Year ballet season with Jones’s Mastersingers, already triumphant in Wales five years earlier, and rebuked the Arts Council diktat – as well as several disgraceful articles by colleagues within the music world who wished ENO a swift death – by doing what only a big company can in the highest of styles.

So where’s the problem? Clearly, as usual, in the management, not in the artistic team with its indispensable orchestra and chorus under Edward Gardner, a young conductor of almost unbrokenly triumphant track record as he prepares to leave the company at the end of this season (Mark Wigglesworth, his successor, has an even longer track record of depth and seriousness). Even in the very rocky years following the so-called powerhouse heyday, run by the triumvirate of Peter Jonas, Mark Elder and David Pountney, you’d find at least two shows a season of the highest artistic credentials.

The press, meanwhile, has always loved to anoint kings and scoff at beggars, puffing up one of London's major houses at the expense of the other. And it's ludicrous how much emphasis can be placed on a single production. I well remember during my year on the short-lived Sunday Correspondent being rung up by the arts editor with "I hear there was booing at the Royal Opera last night. Is this a case for an 'Isaacs Must Go' piece?" – Jeremy Isaacs then being RO supremo, and possibly at that stage not responsible for half the productions booked well in advance. Of course it wasn't – some shows were excellent, others not so good, all par for an opera house season. The game is still being played – a recent broadsheet interview, through no fault of the writer, was headed "Can Peter Sellars save ENO?" – pinning hopes misplaced, as it turns out, on the director's new production of Purcell's The Indian Queen while The Mastersingers was still going strong.

During the time of Dennis Marks's regime at ENO, it was clear that the bureaucrats were the ones floundering. But you can’t accuse John Berry, the current and much-maligned artistic director, of lacking adventurousness or vision. Sure, there have been some misjudgments, but many couldn’t have been anticipated. Berry hit the era of over-dependence on video work – what seemed fresh to begin with soon felt stale and clichéd – but that particular crisis seems to be over. (Jones in his three productions didn’t use the medium at all in Rodelinda – Christopher Ainslie, Rebecca Evans and Matt Casey pictured above by Clive Barda – and Mastersingers, hardly at all in Girl of the Golden West). There was the untrumpeted engagement of two women conductors in a row – one very fine, the other on the strength of her Adams work superlative – and while criticisms were made of an over-dependence on American singers (“is this ENGLISH National Opera?”), the current diamond boasts a Scots bass-baritone, a Welsh tenor and an English baritone and soprano in the leading Wagnerian roles.

It’s in the middle and lower price ranges that the empty seats are most conspicuousFiscal details aren’t my territory, but I do know that at least three things need to change. First, this is no longer “the people’s opera”, if indeed it ever was. Programmes sport advertisements for expensive jewellery and private schools; the stalls are about as unrepresentative a cross-section of the public as they are at Covent Garden, albeit with less corporate profile. Second, and very much connected with this, the publicity department isn't really getting the best results out of its superb brand. One of the company’s distinguished opera directors compared the situation with the young, bright PR folk at a smaller theatre where he also works: "They’re on to you straight away, working out what angles they can sell – it’s much more dynamic." The recent attempt to sell Don Giovanni with a poster bringing up condoms, so to speak, was disastrous; since then, the images just haven’t caught the excitement of the shows. Full marks, though, to the website, which is quick off the mark with films and feedback.

The third stumbling block brings us back to ticket pricing. The company seems to have no problem with its more expensive seats: stalls for The Mastersingers run have mostly been taken. It’s in the middle and lower price ranges that the empty seats are most conspicuous. True, Wagner is always going to cost more, but even the recent run of Bohème wasn’t sold out. If Raymond Gubbay can market Puccini, why can’t ENO? So more creativity needs to be applied here: in the age of instant mass e-mailing, couldn’t schools or youth groups receive round robins at the last minute to paper the house?

That doesn’t address the financial problem, though: the box office seems to me like the place to start. Or so I think from limited knowledge. Of one thing, though, I’m sure: the artistic team is doing superlative work under difficult circumstances, delivering time after time. It would be criminal to see it disembowelled. So here's hoping newly-appointed CEO Cressida Pollock can build on what's daringly best about the company rather than plunge in with slash-and-burn techniques.