Moving the English National Opera to Manchester is an ill-conceived idea - Stuart Murphy

Last week someone in this paper wrote that I had ill-informed views, having described ACE’s decision to relocate the ENO as a “travesty”, yet ignored the full context of my argument.

Growing up, I played clarinet in Leeds Youth Orchestra and all my family still live in Leeds, so I’m fully aware there is a healthy audience appetite outside London for culture in all its forms. And I feel very strongly about how the North is often wrongly portrayed as somewhere not as worthy of investment as London.

That sense of unfairness influenced my previous career in TV – when I launched BBC Three and then Sky Atlantic, I insisted all dramas needed to be based and filmed out of London, for instance. And it’s something that I’ve felt very strongly about since I joined the ENO too. We are a national organisation that should have a national presence. So on a personal level, I am chuffed the Government is so committed to the levelling up agenda, finally recognising there’s more to the UK than a London postcode.

That’s exactly why we broadcast on the BBC and Sky Arts, increased our digital output with partners like Netflix and Tik Tok, and launched ENO Breathe, which is now available in more than 85 NHS Trusts all around the country, 23 across the North East and North West, 4 in Yorkshire alone, helping patients recover from long Covid by learning how to sing.

It’s also why we put in our application to ACE that we wanted to increase our performance output out of London too – keeping our base there but developing satellite operations embedded in regional cities.

So I was appalled when ACE told us, with less than 24 hours’ notice, that they wanted us to uproot from London, without providing audience data, market assessment or an opera strategy.

They suggested a possible investment of £17m over three years to make the move but that’s less than 50 per cent of our current funding.

Why should audiences out of London be given a lesser product compared to London audiences? It is insulting, patronising and repeating the pattern of metropolitan prejudice I grew up with.

ACE had casually suggested a move to Manchester, a location on which they had done no due diligence and supported by no audience-led data.

Most tellingly they hadn’t spoken to Opera North who already create brilliant work across the north in theatres, schools and public places.

One of the arguments that has been presented is that London can’t serve two opera houses even though lesser capitals like Vienna, Berlin and Paris all have three.

I don’t get why London is “overserved” if it has two opera houses whereas Manchester won’t be?

What we are saying is let the ENO maintain our base at our home for the past fifty years, the London Coliseum (where half our visitors come from out of London) but help us create amazing work for everyone. And don’t offer non-London audiences much smaller budgets.

Stuart Murphy is CEO of ENO and the London Coliseum.