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Post by Someone in a tree on Oct 16, 2017 8:44:56 GMT
I was down in the back corner of the stalls. Terrible acoustic.
ENO really need to leave the Coli
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Post by tonyloco on Oct 16, 2017 13:08:18 GMT
I was down in the back corner of the stalls. Terrible acoustic. ENO really need to leave the Coli Yes, I heartily agree. So that makes complaints about the sound in the middle of the balcony from me, the back of the dress circle from tmesis and the back corner of the stalls. No wonder the audiences stay away in droves! Seriously, I do wonder whether suggestions that ENO would be far better off in the under-used Barbican Theatre might prove sensible, although I don't know whether or not that auditorium would prove acoustically satisfactory for opera. But I guess that's not going to happen and we will have to suffer the disaster of ENO eventually collapsing altogether as the NY City Opera eventually did.
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Post by Honoured Guest on Oct 16, 2017 13:19:08 GMT
Everything changes.
It's life.
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Post by tonyloco on Oct 16, 2017 14:49:55 GMT
Everything changes. It's life. Yes, but ENO (or Sadler's Wells as it was previously) should never have moved into the Coli in the first place, although it did happen to suit the Goodall Wagner productions. I am not properly acquainted with the current state of world opera, but are there not still three opera houses operating in Paris and Berlin? And don't some cities in Germany and Austria still have two opera houses, with the second house playing mainly operettas? That was certainly true in Munich and Vienna in the past, unless it has changed now. If this is the case, then it would be nice to think London could support the ROH as its major international house and then a smaller house doing more specialised repertoire under the banner of 'English National'. But maybe you are right and this is not the time for such an arrangement and perhaps even the ROH's days in its present form are numbered. Oh well, it doesn't bother me at the end of my theatre-going life but I feel sorry that young people can't have the same enormous pleasure and satisfactions as I did back in the 1960s and 70s going frequently to Covent Garden and Rosebery Avenue to see wonderful operas in generally traditional productions.
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Post by Someone in a tree on Jun 20, 2018 7:35:33 GMT
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Post by vabbian on Jun 20, 2018 10:50:17 GMT
The seating in the Coliseum is awful. that is one reason people are reluctant to go (without paying premium prices)
Also, ENO is known for modern/new productions, which a lot of opera fans are not keen on
I think these reasons are why most opera fans find themselves at the ROH more often than the ENO
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Post by Dawnstar on Jun 20, 2018 15:38:57 GMT
^Those are definitely the two main reasons I don't go to ENO very often, with the style of the productions being the main thing that puts me off. By in large I don't have a problem with operas being sung in English. The only one I've seen where I felt it really didn't work well was Tosca.
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Post by vabbian on Jun 20, 2018 17:11:12 GMT
I do think the cheap seats at the Coliseum are a bit of a con
They should be sold as listening seats as you wont be able to see most of the production
I remember a few years ago me and my sister went to the ENO for Sweeney Todd, and we could only afford the cheap seats at the top, never again....!
Actually if the cheap seats were free I still wouldn't go
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Post by Someone in a tree on Jun 20, 2018 19:36:41 GMT
Although Sweeney was a commercial productionwith Grade and Linnett. ENO do not build over the orchestra pit. Well I have seen it once with the Bitter tears of Petra Von Kant but that is once in my 20 years of ENO going.
I have sat in the gods multiple times and found the view to be really good and acoustic is the best.
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Post by tonyloco on Jun 30, 2018 11:05:14 GMT
Well, whatever the pros and cons, ENO is having a rough time with rising costs and dwindling audiences. I and other members have said more than once that it was a mistake for the Sadler's Wells Opera to move into the Coliseum and, even now, they would be better off in a smaller house (like perhaps the Barbican Theatre).
Now today we have David Mellor chiding ENO for trying to make ends meet by letting out the Coliseum to commercial theatre companies to do non-operatic shows. He says that he was one of the people who persuaded the Government to buy the freehold of the Coliseum for ENO and they should be concentrating on doing what they are supposed to be doing.
It presumably does not occur to him that ENO at the Coliseum is just not working and what is needed is a solution to the current problems, not a lecture on ENO's ingratitude for what he personally did in securing the Coliseum for them. Typical politician!
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Post by Someone in a tree on Jun 30, 2018 12:15:06 GMT
Totally agree. He is criticising ENO for wearing a business hat - I say top marks for renting out the space and generating extra income
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Post by tmesis on Jun 30, 2018 13:11:36 GMT
I agree with tonyloco - it is simply too big for the current demand and, on the whole, lacklustre standard of the performances of ENO. However, it has two advantages over ROH: much better sightlines and a better acoustic. Wagner in particular sounds wonderful there. I remember with great fondness some excellent Ring Cycles with Rita Hunter and Alberto Remedios. That would be a good forty years ago and, frankly, they haven't done a decent one since. Oh, and also I have a great fondness for the building. It's my second favourite Matcham masterpiece after the exquisite Buxton Opera House.
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Post by tonyloco on Jun 30, 2018 14:52:32 GMT
I agree with tonyloco - it is simply too big for the current demand and, on the whole, lacklustre standard of the performances of ENO. However, it has two advantages over ROH: much better sightlines and a better acoustic. Wagner in particular sounds wonderful there. I remember with great fondness some excellent Ring Cycles with Rita Hunter and Alberto Remedios. That would be a good forty years ago and, frankly, they haven't done a decent one since. Yes, tmesis: conducted by the great Reginald Goodall, who also gave us the most amazing Mastersingers at the Coliseum with Norman Bailey and Alberto Remedios, with two thousand people sitting for the two hours of Act III with tears rolling down their faces from the sheer beauty of the music and the singing – a memorable experience!
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Post by tmesis on Jun 30, 2018 18:10:07 GMT
Yes tonyloco I really should have given a heads up to the magnificent Reggie. I never saw his Meistersingers (how I would have loved to) but did see his Ring. The difference was almost laughable when I saw virtually the same singers conducted so uninspiringly by Sir Charles Groves a number of years later. Other memorable Reggie performances included his WNO Tristan. I remember when he started the prelude thinking 'God this is slow!' but within five minutes I was hooked and then completely spellbound.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 14, 2019 12:22:42 GMT
I see in the press that the old canard about ENO singing in English has come to life again.
As we have already discussed earlier in this thread, ENO has a number of problems and I believe singing in English is not by any means top of the list. I haven't been to all that many ENO performances in recent years but at my last visit (to see Aida) I could barely understand any of the English words that were being sung and I believe that with the standard repertoire of French, German and Italian operas the audience is better off looking at English surtitles than trying to catch all the words of an English translation that, no matter how good it is, will inevitably cause changes to the music that the composer wrote to set the original 'foreign language' libretto.
As I have said before, if ENO wants to cater for an audience that can understand all the English words they are singing then they really need to be performing in a smaller and more intimate venue like perhaps the Barbican Theatre. But I suspect that raising the question of singing only in English is just a distraction to the larger problem of how ENO can best survive while fulfilling its role as London's second opera company alongside the Royal Opera.
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Post by Someone in a tree on Jan 14, 2019 16:21:03 GMT
Singing in English is very dated concept. If ETO can perform an itialan sung verdi in Wolverhampton...
Why can't ENO have a trial period?
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Post by tmesis on Jan 14, 2019 21:49:10 GMT
The audibly of the words at ENO has been poor for around 20 years. For that reason they might as well sing everything in the original language. Prior to that it could be variable but was generally good and could often be outstanding when you had singers of the calibre of Janet Baker, Felicity Lott, Ann Murray, Valerie Masterson, John Tomlinson, Richard Van Allan et al.
I have even been to an (unintentional) multi-lingual production of Parsifal there.
It would be around 1980. At the start of the performance a dinner-jacketed guy announces that the tenor singing Parsifal is indisposed - cue slight groan from audience - but his part would tonight be sung by Siegfried Jerusalem (huge cheer from audience!) - he continued: 'Unfortunately Mr. Jerusalem only knows the part in German...' so that's what we got, and magnificent it was too since he was the best heldentenor of his day, and hardly ever came to London. I think I might have once seen him at ROH after that but I was ecstatic to see him that night and what a great stoke of luck that was.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 14, 2019 23:15:26 GMT
The audibly of the words at ENO has been poor for around 20 years. For that reason they might as well sing everything in the original language. Prior to that it could be variable but was generally good and could often be outstanding when you had singers of the calibre of Janet Baker, Felicity Lott, Ann Murray, Valerie Masterson, John Tomlinson, Richard Van Allan et al. Yes, tmesis, you are right. I was going to mention the fact that earlier generations of singers had better English pronunciation than the current lot, and it was even better in the smaller auditorium of Sadler's Wells in Rosebery Avenue. In fact, when I started going in the 1960s we had singers (some of them Australians) like June Bronhill, Elizabeth Fretwell, Ronald Dowd, Eric Shilling, Kevin Miller, Donald Smith, David Ward, Joyce Blackham, Alberto Remedios, Patricia Kern, Derek Hammond-Stroud and others whose every word was totally audible and understandable in every part of the house. And for those who remember seeing the first 'Force of Destiny' production at the Coliseum, you will know just how clear and penetrating the English words could be when sung by Derek Hammond-Stroud (Melitone), Donald Smith (Alvaro) and Joyce Blackham (Preziosilla). Sorry to go off on one of my reminiscenses but there's no point in performing opera in English at the Coliseum if the audience can't make out more than the occasional word of what's being sung, which used not to be the case with the Sadler's Wells company at Rosebery Avenue.
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Post by Fleance on Jan 15, 2019 4:37:31 GMT
I've enjoyed many operas at the ENO/Coliseum, most recently a version of La Forza del Destino (in English); Marnie (which was interesting); and Porgy and Bess. These were all co-productions with the Metropolitan Opera in New York. You'd think I could have seen the operas at the Met (Porgy is scheduled for next season), which is less than a ten-minute walk from my flat, but I do love the ENO and the beautiful Coliseum. And you can get much better seats for a very reasonable price.
Forza (called The Force of Destiny) never made it to the Met. Although it was clearly billed as a co-production, a friend of mine bet me that the Met would never do a Verdi opera in English. He was right. I lost $10. The head of the Met announced that the production was being cancelled and replaced with the Verdi Requiem. Which was a shame, It was a controversial production by Calixto Bieito but definitely worth seeing.
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Post by Someone in a tree on Jan 28, 2019 9:46:27 GMT
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Xanderl
Member
Not always very high value in terms of ticket yield or donations
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Post by Xanderl on Oct 8, 2019 12:34:10 GMT
New Artistic Director announced. Seems like a good choice
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Post by Someone in a tree on Oct 8, 2019 15:44:28 GMT
New Artistic Director announced. Seems like a good choice Unlike our government ENO have persued the Norway option
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Post by Dawnstar on Oct 8, 2019 18:00:38 GMT
Promising that they have at least appointed someone with a decent opera background this time!
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 15, 2019 15:39:26 GMT
Avoid Orpheus in the Underworld. Not just a Regie job, it has been substantially rewritten in a way that runs counter to the satire orginally intended
Shame as there's much to admire with some great singing and acting and a hopeless bit of stunt casting. But it goes further and further off the rails and when the Gallop Infernal (Can Can) is performed not as a hedonistic romp that proves the Devil has the best tunes, but as an angry rant about the exploitation of women, then you know the plot is lost.
Shame, its Offenbach's 200th anniversary and about 40 years since they last did this piece. Its full of great tunes and even if the ending is 'problematic', traducing it is not the answer. Place was half empty.
Sigh, just when you think things are improving. Good luck Annilese.
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Post by Someone in a tree on Oct 15, 2019 16:27:23 GMT
Visually the pics look stunning but I detest Emma Rice and so I'm glad my credit card remained in my wallet
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Post by Someone in a tree on Apr 13, 2021 11:43:39 GMT
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