“English National Opera has been thrown into fresh turmoil after its respected music director Mark Wigglesworth unexpectedly resigned,” write Mark Brown and Imogen Tilden on Tuesday’s (3/22) Guardian (London). “The conductor announced he would step down at the end of the current season…. In a resignation letter to musicians … Wigglesworth made plain his disillusionment at the direction that ENO was taking…. Wigglesworth, 51, has only been in the post since September 2015…. The conductor has found himself with the beleaguered company during a time of huge funding cuts…. At the heart of its present troubles is the need to spend less money after Arts Council England cut its annual grant by 29%, or £5m a year.… The resignation comes only four days after it looked as if ENO was starting to put its many troubles behind it. The threat of a strike by its chorus, threatened with a pay cut of at least 25%, was only narrowly averted last week. While offstage at the ENO it has been turmoil, onstage it has been a period of striking artistic success, including record box-office figures for Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, which is the company’s most successful contemporary opera to date, playing to a 96% occupancy.”
Posted March 24, 2016
