English National Opera (ENO) is a British opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera. ENO's productions are sung in English.
The company's origins were in the late 19th century, when the philanthropist Emma Cons, later assisted by her niece Lilian Baylis, presented theatrical and operatic performances at the Old Vic, for the benefit of local people. Baylis subsequently built up both the opera and the theatre companies, and later added a ballet company; these evolved into the ENO, the Royal National Theatre and The Royal Ballet, respectively.
Baylis acquired and rebuilt the Sadler's Wells theatre in north London, a larger house, better suited to opera than the Old Vic. The opera company grew there into a permanent ensemble in the 1930s. During the Second World War, the theatre was closed and the company toured British towns and cities. After the war, the company returned to its home, but it continued to expand and improve. By the 1960s, a larger theatre was needed. In 1968, the company moved to the London Coliseum and adopted its present name in 1974.
Among the conductors associated with the company have been Colin Davis, Reginald Goodall, Charles Mackerras, Mark Elder and Edward Gardner. The most recent music director of the ENO was Martyn Brabbins. Noted directors who have staged productions at the ENO have included David Pountney, Jonathan Miller, Nicholas Hytner, Phyllida Lloyd and Calixto Bieito. The ENO's current artistic director is Annilese Miskimmon. In addition to the core operatic repertoire, the company has presented a wide range of works, from early operas by Monteverdi to new commissions, operetta and Broadway shows.
History
Foundations
In 1889, Emma Cons, a Victorian philanthropist who ran the Old Vic theatre in a working-class area of London, began presenting regular fortnightly performances of opera excerpts. Although the theatre licensing laws of the day prevented full costumed performances, Cons presented condensed versions of well-known operas, always sung in English. Among the performers were noted singers such as Charles Santley.Gilbert, p. 11 These operatic evenings quickly became more popular than the dramas that Cons had been staging separately. In 1898, she recruited her niece Lilian Baylis to help run the theatre. At the same time she appointed Charles Corri as the Old Vic's musical director."Obituary – Mr. Charles Corri", The Times, 13 June 1941, p. 7 Baylis and Corri, despite many disagreements, shared a passionate belief in popularising opera, hitherto generally the preserve of the rich and fashionable.Schafer, p. 106 They worked on a tiny budget, with an amateur chorus and a professional orchestra of only 18 players, for whom Corri rescored the instrumental parts of the operas.Schafer, pp. 104–105 By the early years of the 20th century, the Old Vic was able to present semi-staged versions of Wagner operas.Schafer, p. 124
Emma Cons died in 1912, leaving her estate, including the Old Vic, to Baylis, who dreamed of transforming the theatre into a "people's opera house".Schafer, p. 181 In the same year, Baylis obtained a licence to allow the Old Vic to stage full performances of operas.Schafer, p. 102 In the 1914–1915 season, Baylis staged 16 operas and 16 plays (13 of which were by Shakespeare).Gilbert, p. 23 In the years after the First World War, Baylis's Shakespeare productions, which featured some of the leading actors from London's West End, attracted national attention, as her shoe-string opera productions did not. The opera, however, remained her first priority.Gilbert, p. 29 The actor-manager Robert Atkins, who worked closely with Baylis on her Shakespearean productions, recalled, "Opera, on Thursday and Saturday nights, played to bulging houses.""The Lady of Waterloo Road", The Times, 30 March 1974, p. 9
Vic-Wells
By the 1920s, Baylis concluded that the Old Vic no longer sufficed to house both her theatre and her opera companies. She noticed the empty and derelict Sadler's Wells theatre in Rosebery Avenue, Islington, on the other side of London from the Old Vic. She sought to run it in tandem with her existing theatre."The Story of Sadler's Wells", The Musical Times, September 1937, pp. 781–786
Baylis made a public appeal for funds in 1925. With the help of the Carnegie Trust and many others, she acquired the freehold of Sadler's Wells.Rowe, R.P.P. "The Old Vic and Sadler's Wells", Music & Letters, April 1932, pp. 141–146 Work started on the site in 1926. By Christmas 1930, a completely new 1,640-seat theatre was ready for occupation. The first production there, a fortnight's run from 6 January 1931, was Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The first opera, given on 20 January, was Carmen. Eighteen operas were staged during the first season.
The new theatre was more expensive to run than the Old Vic, as a larger orchestra and more singers were needed, and box office receipts were at first inadequate. In 1932, the Birmingham Post commented that the Vic-Wells opera performances did not reach the standards of the Vic-Wells Shakespeare productions.Gilbert, p. 46 Baylis strove to improve operatic standards, while at the same time fending off attempts by Sir Thomas Beecham to absorb the opera company into a joint enterprise with Covent Garden, where he was in command.Gilbert, p. 49 At first, the apparent financial security of the offer appeared attractive, but friends and advisers such as Edward J. Dent and Clive Carey convinced Bayliss that it was not in the interests of her regular audience.Gilbert, p. 51 This view received strong support from the press; The Times wrote:
The Old Vic began by offering opera of some sort to people who hardly knew what the word meant ... under a wise, fostering guidance it has gradually worked upwards ...Any kind of amalgamation which made it the poor relation of the 'Grand' season would be disastrous."Operatic Policies – The Case for Duality", The Times, 11 June 1932, p. 10
At first, Baylis presented both drama and opera at each of her theatres. The companies were known as the "Vic-Wells". However, for both aesthetic and financial reasons, by 1934, the Old Vic had become the home of the spoken drama, while Sadler's Wells housed both the opera and a ballet company, the latter co-founded by Baylis and Ninette de Valois in 1930.
Lawrance Collingwood joined the company as resident conductor alongside Corri. With the increased number of productions, guest conductors were recruited, including Geoffrey Toye and Anthony Collins. The increasing success of the new ballet company helped to subsidise the high cost of opera productions, enabling a further increase in the size of the orchestra, to 48 players.Gilbert, p. 58 Among the singers in the opera company were Joan Cross and Edith Coates."Sadler's Wells", The Times, 18 April 1931, p. 8 In the 1930s, the company presented standard repertoire operas by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Puccini, lighter works by Balfe, Donizetti, Offenbach and Johann Strauss, some novelties, among which were operas by Holst, Ethel Smyth and Charles Villiers Stanford, and an unusual attempt at staging an oratorio, Mendelssohn's Elijah.
In November 1937, Baylis died of a heart attack. Her three companies continued under the direction of her appointed successors: Tyrone Guthrie at the Old Vic, in overall charge of both theatres, with de Valois running the ballet, and Carey and two colleagues running the opera.Gilbert, pp. 63–66 In the Second World War, the government requisitioned Sadler's Wells as a refuge for those made homeless by air-raids. Guthrie decided to keep the opera going as a small touring ensemble of 20 performers. Between 1942 and the war's end in 1945, the company toured continuously, visiting 87 venues. Joan Cross led and managed the company, and also sang leading soprano roles in its productions when needed. The size of the company was increased to 50, and then to 80.Gilbert, pp. 79 and 83 By 1945, its members included singers from a new generation such as Peter Pears and Owen Brannigan, and the conductor Reginald Goodall.Gilbert, pp. 86, 89 and 95
Sadler's Wells Opera
Both Sadler's Wells and the Royal Opera House had presented no opera or ballet since 1939. The Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), the official government body charged with dispensing the modest public subsidy recently introduced, considered its options on the future of opera in Britain. CEMA concluded that a new Covent Garden company should be established, as a year-round, permanent ensemble, singing in English, instead of the shorter international seasons of pre-war years. This was a potential path to merge the two companies, as the modus operandi of the new Covent Garden company was now similar to that of Sadler's Wells.Haltrecht, pp. 55–56 However, David Webster, who was appointed to run Covent Garden, though keen to secure de Valois' ballet company for Covent Garden, did not want the Sadler's Wells opera company. He considered Sadler's Wells to be a worthy organisation, but also "dowdy" and "stodgy". Even with a policy of singing in English, he believed that he could assemble a better company.Haltrecht, p. 56 The management of Sadler's Wells was unwilling to lose its company's name and tradition. It was agreed that the two companies should remain separate.Haltrecht, p. 59
Divisions within the company threatened its continued existence. Cross announced her intention to re-open Sadler's Wells theatre with Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten, with herself and Pears in the leading roles. Many complaints resulted about supposed favouritism and the "cacophony" of Britten's score.Gilbert, p. 98 Peter Grimes opened in June 1945, to both public and critical acclaim;See, for example, "Sadler's Wells Opera – 'Peter Grimes'", The Times, 8 June 1945, p. 6, and Glock, William. "Music", The Observer, 10 June 1945, p. 2 its box-office takings matched or exceeded those for La bohème and Madame Butterfly, which the company was concurrently staging.Banks, pp. xvi–xviii. However, the rift within the company was irreparable. Cross, Britten and Pears severed their ties with Sadler's Wells in December 1945 and founded the English Opera Group.Gilbert, p. 107 The departure of the ballet company to Covent Garden two months later deprived Sadler's Wells of an important source of income, as the ballet had been profitable and had since its inception subsidised the opera company.Gilbert, pp. 54 and 108
Clive Carey, who had been in Australia during the war, was brought back to replace Joan Cross and rebuild the company. The critic Philip Hope-Wallace wrote in 1946 that Carey had begun to make a difference, but that Sadler's Wells needed "a big heave to get out of mediocrity".Gilbert, p. 109 In the same year, The Times Literary Supplement asked whether the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells companies would stick to their old bases, "or shall they boldly embrace the ideal of a National Theatre and a National Opera in English?""Drama in Practice and Theory", The Times Literary Supplement, 12 January 1946, p. 21 Carey left in 1947, replaced in January 1948 by a triumvirate of James Robertson as musical director, Michael Mudie as his assistant conductor and Norman Tucker in charge of administration."Sadler's Wells Directors", The Manchester Guardian, 6 January 1948, p. 3 From October 1948, Tucker was given sole control. Mudie became ill, and the young Charles Mackerras was appointed to deputise for him.Gilbert, p. 119