English National Opera told to put its house in order

On stage, English National Opera has been getting five star reviews for a dazzling production of Wagner’s epic comedy The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. Off stage, the company has lurched from crisis to crisis and is now effectively fighting for its life. After years of financial problems, Arts Council England on Thursday gave the troubled opera company what amounts to the final chance to get its house in order.

The council announced it was taking the unprecedented step of removing ENO from the national portfolio of 670 arts organisations which receive regular money, and was instead offering “special funding arrangements” because of continuing concerns over the opera’s business plan and governance.

Althea Efunshile, acting chief executive of the council, said: “No one is doubting that ENO is capable of extraordinary artistic work, but we have serious concerns about their governance and business model and we expect them to improve or they could face removal of funding.”

The concerns follow two dramatic departures from the top of the organisation. In December, ENO’s chairman, Martyn Rose, announced he was stepping down after less than two years in the job. The official reason was his belief that more time needed to be devoted to the role. The true reason became apparent in a leaked letter he wrote to the company’s president, Vernon Ellis: it was a spectacular falling-out with the ENO’s artistic director, John Berry.

In his letter, Rose said ENO had lost £10m during Berry’s tenure and that Berry was “the problem, not the solution, and no meaningful change will ever take place while he remains … for the very survival of the ENO Berry must leave, preferably soon.” Rose was effectively saying to ENO’s board of trustees, “It’s me or him.” The board backed Berry.

Two weeks ago, ENO’s executive director, Henriette Götz, announced that she too was stepping down, amid reports of repeated clashes with Berry. Berry remains in his job while the ENO now searches for not a new executive director, but a new chief executive – one of the conditions imposed by the Arts Council.

The council is also moving ENO from a three-year funding arrangement to one covering two years. It will still get the £12.38m agreed last year, a sum it will also receive in 2016/17. But instead of £7.6m transitional funding to make changes to its business model, it will get £6.13m – which is effectively £1m more than had been agreed because it is over two years instead of three.

All that comes with conditions. The arrangements include “the recruitment of a suitably qualified chief executive able to develop and deliver a new business model for the company, strengthening of the company’s financial operations, and the recruitment of a permanent chair”. The council is also insisting on monthly reporting on income and expenditure, audience figures and recruitment progress.

ENO has struggled with financial problems for years, needing £10m of “stabilisation” money in 2002 to prevent it from collapse and reporting a deficit of £2.2m in 2012. The company was forced to find a new business model when the Arts Council last year cut the money it gave to the opera company by a third, or £5m.

Opera is the most expensive of art forms and filling the vast Coliseum, the biggest theatre in London’s West End with more than 2,300 seats, is a perpetual nightmare for a company which aspires to be as daring as the ENO.

The turmoil at ENO has caused Peter Sellars, the company’s director-in-residence, to describe it as a “Chernobyl meltdown”. He told a conference in east London that the ENO’s woes were a reflection of wider problems. “Let me just say really simply that cultural meltdown is the order of the day. There’s not one theatre or opera company that can sell out anything any more.”

There remains a lot of support for Berry, who has built significant artistic relationships with opera companies around the world as well as with artists. It was Berry who drew Terry Gilliam and Mike Leigh into the world of opera with the latter’s Pirates of Penzance, due to open in May.

Sir Peter Jonas, who was artistic administrator of the ENO between 1985 and 1993, wrote that Berry was “an ‘intendant’ of talent, credibility, taste and energy, all of which have gained him and the company admiration throughout Europe and even across the pond”.

There was sympathy too over at the Royal Opera House, which went through its share of troubles in the mid-1990s, all publicly documented in a BBC fly-on-the wall documentary. Alex Beard, the ROH’s chief executive, said: “I just think about my own operagoing experience; it would have been vastly impoverished if there had been only one opera house in London. I was as much an ENO-goer as I was a Royal Opera-goer. Look at New York ... I don’t think the Met has benefited from the demise of New York city opera [which went bust in 2013]. That said, and it is as true of us as it is of the ENO, every organisation needs to evolve.”

ENO is now pinning its hopes on a new business plan which includes making money from a West End musical partnership with Michael Grade and Michael Linnet. It also aims to open up the Coliseum bars and cafes more regularly, and to create a new production centre under one roof.

In a statement, Harry Brunjes, acting chairman of ENO, expressed gratitude to the Arts Council. “The ENO board will continue to work closely with Arts Council England to inspire confidence in our future plans, the management of the company and the London Coliseum”.

Key ENO players

John Berry
Berry is this year marking 10 years as artistic director of English National Opera, although he may not be celebrating it. He is widely admired for the inventive, risk-taking, programme he puts on, but like any opera head, he has had misses as well as hits. Opinions differ as to how easy he is to get along with.

Martyn Rose
Rose is described by the communications consultancy Morgan Rossiter as “one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs”, who has made his fortune by buying and selling companies. He is an opera-lover who took over as chairman of ENO in 2013. He resigned in December and it was the leaking of an incendiary letter, berating Berry, that helped spark the company’s current troubles.

Henriette Götz
Rose brought Götz in as executive director of ENO in April 2014, praising her “financial acumen and deep knowledge of the international opera” sector. Previously executive director of Vlaamse Opera, in Belgium, her days seemed numbered once Rose quit. Her departure was announced two weeks ago.

Peter Bazalgette
Chairman of English National Opera until he was appointed chair of Arts Council England. Because of that connection, he absented himself from all discussions about ENO and has not taken any part in the developments this week.