Music director walks off because of cuts
English National Opera is on a slow, atonal glissando into silence. Its music director, Martyn Brabbins, stunned the London opera scene by resigning this week, stalking from the pit over reports the ENO is planning to axe 19 jobs in the orchestra and give its remaining musicians part-time contracts. The company’s raised-eyebrow response – that it was “surprised that Brabbins has decided to end his tenure… so abruptly,” since he “has been party to all key discussions” – covers up a desperate boardroom battle for survival.
The ENO is struggling to pay back a Covid recovery loan by next year, cover its costs, move partially out of London, and maintain full-time employment for its performers with transitional funding granted to it by Arts Council England of around £11.5 million per year. Cuts imposed last year by ACE reduced opera funding by 22 per cent, leaving total UK government subsidy for opera at less than the French government’s funding for just one of the four opera companies in Paris. And yet somehow the French pay the same rate of VAT as the British and less direct income tax.
Does London need two opera companies? Does Opera North’s regular residency in Manchester need supplementing? Does the ENO have a purpose? Rupert Christiansen, the Telegraph’s former opera critic, retired recently because, he said, “opera is sliding towards the end, and I found it depressing”.
Given many opera fans are above-average earners, it may be instructive to compare higher-rate taxation in the UK and France. The overall tax burden is higher in the latter than the former, but direct income tax on annual earnings of £150,000 currently amounts to £52,460 in the UK compared with £37,645 in France. You get a lot more opera for your taxes in Paris.