Running an opera company may be a niche occupation, especially in the UK, where the chances to do so are pretty limited, but there are some basic requirements. A practical knowledge of the art form is always a good start, but that’s something that the board of English National Opera, which is not exactly overloaded with in-depth opera knowledge, seems to think is irrelevant in appointing a new chief executive.
In announcing the appointment of Stuart Murphy, former director of Sky Entertainment Channels, to succeed Cressida Pollock, who last autumn announced that she would be stepping down at the end of this season, ENO’s press release makes a point of mentioning Murphy’s teenage experience as a clarinet player. But his only opera experience seems to have been when he was controller of BBC Three, and commissioned Flashmob – the Opera in London’s Paddington station and Flashmob Faust at Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield well over a decade ago.
Apparently, ENO’s shortlist for the job included at least two people who have proven track records of running opera companies, either of whom would have been a sensible and positive choice. But instead the board has opted for someone with no first-hand experience of how the business works at all. Pollock, by her own admission, knew nothing about opera when she was appointed to the role either, but she was brought in with a well-defined brief to stabilise a company that was in financial crisis and to make the hard-nosed decisions that would put it on a more even keel. A division of responsibility between administration and artistic planning may be the normal way of running an opera company – it’s the model that’s been successful at the Royal Opera for many years – but usually the chief executive has at least a working knowledge of what’s involved in getting opera on to the stage.
The triumvirate that ran ENO during its heyday in the 1980s, the so-called Powerhouse years, had exactly the right mix of talents: Peter Jonas, who was managing director, worked alongside music director Mark Elder and director of productions David Pountney; Jonas spent his whole career in music, and went to become Intendant of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich after he left the Coliseum.
ENO is now in a situation where it needs more than a financial quick-fix; its situation has changed markedly since it was threatened with closure when the Arts Council of England removed it from its national funding portfolio in 2015, and effectively placed it in special measures. Yet now, with its portfolio status restored, the future of a company that ought to be moving forward has been put in the hands of a chief executive with virtually no operatic experience; a music director, Martyn Brabbins, who, for all his outstanding qualities as a conductor, has spent the larger proportion of his career in the concert hall; and an artistic director, Daniel Kramer, who hadn’t run an opera company previously, either, but who thinks it might be “fun” to do so.
What ENO really needs is the triumph of hope over experience.
