ENO ‘will close in April’ – chair
English National Opera’s chairman has warned that the company will close in April unless Arts Council England changes its mind about cutting all its subsidy and insisting on it moving out of London.
In its three year investment announcement ACE said that it would cut all ENO’s £12.8m a year subsidy unless it moved out of London, suggesting Manchester as a likely alternative location.
But Dr Harry Brunjes has told the All-Party Parliamentary Group for opera that the idea of leaving London needed to be changed if ENO was to have a future.
"There is a lot of discussion around relocation to Manchester, and we have got to flatten that immediately” Brunjes said. “There is no relocation."
Other options needed to be considered, and unless they were ENO would have to close rather than relocate.
"This is closing ENO down” he said. “This is losing 600 jobs from London of talented and devoted and able people across all departments – so let’s get this clear."
CEO Stuart Murphy said moving out of London would mean unaffordable loss of audiences and revenue. "We would love to be part of the national portfolio organisation list” he said. “We applied to be part of that list. We were told we put in a really good pitch – they loved our pitch – and the end-of-year report card says we did a wonderful job for four-and-a-half years. [ACE] has come out and said emphatically that we won’t be in this NPO list; they can’t unpick the list”.
A petition demanding ACE change its decision has accumulated around 50,000 signatures.