ENO / The Guardian

[Geoff]

Only just seen this piece about the troubles of the ENO:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/29/eno-quentin-tarantino-powerhouse-opera-financial-crisis?

 

Unusually interesting comments afterwards.

[Lizbie1]

I don't know what the answer is for ENO but I'm pretty sure it's not a black box in Peckham.

[ninamargaret]

Used to be a,frequent visitor in the 'Powerhouse'days. Productions were exciting, seat prices reasonable, casts good. Now prices are near ROH level ( I can't cope with their Dress Circle or Balcony) and productions and casts questionable. I think the main problem is the theatre is too big and unwieldy and I suspect morale is pretty low. A very long way away from the original intentions of providing culture at a low price!

[Lizbie1]

21 minutes ago, ninamargaret said:

Used to be a,frequent visitor in the 'Powerhouse'days. Productions were exciting, seat prices reasonable, casts good. 

 

The trouble is, as was pointed out in the comments, the finances were pretty terrible then as well - and attendance wasn't much to write home about either.  (Though there seems to be a sort of collective amnesia about that.)

 

I think that given the programming and number of performances we the taxpayers are far from getting good value for money from the ENO subsidy, but you could argue that they've at least achieved what was asked of them by ACE and balanced the books. I'm not sure that's been the case very often in their history.