Cressida speaks

Cressida Pollock, head of English National Opera, has written a piece for today's Independent about the current crisis and how she's tackling it. Well, more why she is tackling it than how...the one definite policy that emerges is a conviction that the Coliseum has to remain at the heart of ENO's work, and vice-versa. That's a start, I guess.

I am often asked if I am an “opera buff”. By the standards of the world in which I now work, I am not (although perhaps in 10 years I might make a claim!). But many of the people who make up our audience today are not “opera buffs”, and nor should they be. Our audience members have so many choices in what to do with an evening – to watch a series on Netflix, to meet friends for dinner, to go to a late night at a museum, or to one of the hundreds of live performances on each night in this city. We should not take their time, or money, for granted. It is our task to persuade them of three things – that opera is the most exciting art form of all, that seeing it live is an incomparable experience and that ENO is where they should see it. 

Happy reading... http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/eno-head-cressida-pollock-s-exclusive-manifesto-to-save-her-company-i-cant-allow-it-to-fail-a6944756.html

[Update] You may find more illuminating information in The Arts Desk's piece talking to members of the exceedingly beleaguered and very wonderful chorus, here.