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| Manchester Opera House – Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net) |
Regional arts provision is a curious thing, with different countries opting for radically different models. In Germany, most decent sized cities have a theatre that produces a mix of spoken drama, dance and opera, this is the main access to music theatre for most people. In the UK, since the 19th century, opera has been presented by touring companies, tours often being achieved by having the orchestra supplemented by local musicians (a model now used by the London Opera Company). Both these models have limitations, in terms of efficiency and musical standards.
There is something essentially curious about touring opera, putting an entire production in a van and taking it around (along with all the performers). But it is a very old model. After the first Ring Cycles at Bayreuth in 1876, Wagner sold the production and the impresario put it all in a special train and toured Europe with it. This was how people came to know the Ring Cycle. The naming of the Opera House in Manchester dates from the 1920s when companies were presenting opera there, and Beecham conducted the Ring Cycle there.
This was still happing in my youth. When I was a student in Manchester during the 1970s there was no idea venue for full-scale opera performance but companies made do with the Opera House and the Palace Theatre. English National Opera, Welsh National Opera and Glyndebourne Opera made regular visits to the city, performing in these theatres. During the three years that I was there I saw Reginald Goodall conducting The Valkyrie and Twilight of the Gods, Britten’s Gloriana, Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier with ENO, Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman and Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro with WNO and Strauss’ Capriccio and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress with Glyndebourne.
Plans were announced in 2008 for the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera to be resident at the refurbished Palace Theatre, but by 2010 fundings cuts meant that the plan was shelved. In the current atmosphere of either/or in Arts Funding, touring to Manchester has been reduced to a UK single company, Opera North (worth seeing and certainly not negligible), with touring also from the impresario Ellen Kent presenting international companies. Though the theatrical provision is far better with the refurbishment of the Palace Theatre and the building of the Lowry. The focus on UK regional opera companies has meant ENO looking increasingly and unfairly London-centric, but has also lead to the farcical situation where with the reduction in WNO funding, Liverpool has lots its visiting company.
Now ENO is planning to base itself in Manchester, creating projects in the city. The company has now announced its plans for a focus on Manchester, with the first wave of plans and collaborations in the city aiming to be fully established there by 2029. Not surprisingly, the announced plans avoid any suggesting of putting the Ring Cycle in a van or on a train and shipping it to Manchester, the announced projects are all far more community based.
- From this Autumn, there will be a city-wide expansion of the ENO Breathe programme, ENO’s award-winning creative health programme, originally created for people recovering from COVID. This new iteration of the ENO Breathe programme will support people living with other respiratory conditions.
- September 2024: ENO Engage will expand their national free music-making programme Finish This…, designed for primary, secondary and SEND schools to the city-region, working with 30 schools across Greater Manchester with further expansion in 2025/26
- Spring 2025: a new collaboration with Factory International through its award-winning Factory Academy training programme, offering vocational training opportunities in opera for young people living in Greater Manchester from backgrounds underrepresented in the arts, including opportunities as part of the creative and technical teams delivering Glass’s Einstein on the Beach.
- Summer 2025: Perfect Pitch, a celebration of opera and community football in a co-creation between Salford-based outdoor arts specialists, Walk the Plank, ENO, community groups and local football teams in the city-region.
- Summer 2025: A special performance will be presented for Manchester Classical festival at The Bridgewater Hall, a collaboration between the Chorus of English National Opera and The Hallé.
- July 2025: The University of Manchester and ENO will work together on Tuning into Opera. This invites the people of Greater Manchester to explore the opportunities for the artform and discuss what it means to have an opera company based in the city-region. The first public conversation event will take place at Manchester International Festival at Aviva Studios
- September 2025: the creation of a Greater Manchester Youth Opera Company in partnership with Greater Manchester and Blackburn with Darwen Music Hub, working with young people aged 13-19 from across the city-region from backgrounds underrepresented and underserved in the arts. ENO will work with Royal Northern College of Music and a range of other partners to pilot the project.
- October 2025: the beginning of a new partnership with the Lowry, with the opening ENO’s production of Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring
- February 2026: a staged concert version of Mozart’s Così fan tutte with the Chorus and Orchestra of ENO, will be presented at The Bridgewater Hall
- Spring 2026: of new work development programmes, designed to champion innovation in opera-making. The RNCM and ENO will launch a Creative Incubator, providing space, mentoring and performance platforms for artists and composers to develop new operatic work. Opera Factory GM will see ENO and Factory International co-create an ongoing series of cross-disciplinary research and development labs designed to explore new forms of opera.
- May 2026: the UK premiere of Angel’s Bone by Chinese American composer Du Yun and librettist Royce Vavrek. This is a dark fable exploring modern-day slavery and human trafficking, produced by ENO in collaboration with Factory International, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and presented at Aviva Studios
- Spring 2027 will be the premiere of an immersive production of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s opera Einstein on the Beach. Following on from the success of his productions of Satyagraha and Akhnaten at ENO, this will be directed by Improbable Theatre’s Phelim McDermott.
Further details from ENO’s website.
