English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane

St. Martin's Lane

St. Martin's Lane is a street on the edge of Covent Garden in Central London, which runs from the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, after which it is named, near Trafalgar Square northwards to Long Acre.A narrow street with relatively little traffic, St...

. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera

Royal Opera, London

The Royal Opera is an opera company based in central London, resident at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Along with the English National Opera, it is one of the two principal opera companies in London. Founded in 1946 as the Covent Garden Opera Company, it was known by that title until 1968...

, Covent Garden

Royal Opera House

The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...

. ENO's productions are sung in English.

The company's origins were in the late 19th century, when the philanthropist Emma Cons

Emma Cons

Emma Cons was a British social reformer, educationalist and theatre manager.-Early life:Born in St. Pancras London, she trained as an artist and joined the Ladies' Co-operative Art Guild, London, run by Caroline Hill, mother of the future housing reformer and founder of the National Trust, Octavia...

, later assisted by her niece Lilian Baylis

Lilian Baylis

Lilian Mary BaylisCH was an English theatrical producer and manager. She managed the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells theatres in London, and ran an opera company, which became the English National Opera , a theatre company, which evolved into the English National Theatre, and a ballet company, which...

, presented theatrical and operatic performances at the Old Vic

Old Vic

The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...

 in a rough area of London for the benefit of local people. From those beginnings, Baylis built up both the opera and the theatre companies, and later added a ballet company; these evolved into the ENO, the Royal National Theatre

Royal National Theatre

The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...

 and the Royal Ballet.

Baylis acquired and rebuilt 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, and by the 1960s a larger theatre was needed. In 1968, the company moved to the London Coliseum in the heart of London; in 1974 it adopted the name English National Opera (ENO). The company has survived several proposals to merge it with the Royal Opera.

Among the conductors associated with the company have been Colin Davis

Colin Davis

Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett....

, Reginald Goodall

Reginald Goodall

Sir Reginald Goodall was an English conductor, noted for his performances of the operas of Richard Wagner and conducting the premieres of several operas by Benjamin Britten.-Biography:...

, Charles Mackerras

Charles Mackerras

Sir Alan Charles Maclaurin Mackerras, AC, CH, CBE was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan...

, Mark Elder

Mark Elder

Sir Mark Philip Elder, CBE is a British conductor. He is the music director of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, England.-Biography:Elder was born in Hexham, Northumberland, England, the son of a dentist...

 and Edward Gardner

Edward Gardner (conductor)

Edward Gardner is a British conductor.Gardner sang as a chorister at Gloucester Cathedral. As a youth, he played piano, clarinet and organ. He attended the King's School, Gloucester and Eton College. At the University of Cambridge, he continued as a music student, and was a choral scholar in...

. ENO is known for its emphasis on the dramatic aspect of opera, with productions, sometimes controversial, by directors including David Pountney

David Pountney

David Pountney is a British theatre and opera director and librettist internationally known for his productions of rarely performed operas and new productions of classic works...

, Jonathan Miller

Jonathan Miller

Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE is a British theatre and opera director, author, physician, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. Trained as a physician in the late 1950s, he first came to prominence in the 1960s with his role in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with fellow writers and...

, Nicholas Hytner

Nicholas Hytner

Sir Nicholas Robert Hytner is an English film and theatre producer and director. He has been the artistic director of London's National Theatre since 2003.-Biography:...

, Phyllida Lloyd

Phyllida Lloyd

Phyllida Lloyd CBE is an English director, best known for her work in theatre and as the director of the most financially successful British film ever released, Mamma Mia!.-Career:...

 and Calixto Bieito

Calixto Bieito

Calixto Bieito is a Spanish theater director known for his "radical" interpretations of classic operas.-Biography:...

. In addition to the core operatic repertoire, ENO has presented a wide range of works, from early operas by Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...

 to new commissions, operetta

Operetta

Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

 and Broadway

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 shows.

Foundations

In 1889, Emma Cons

Emma Cons

Emma Cons was a British social reformer, educationalist and theatre manager.-Early life:Born in St. Pancras London, she trained as an artist and joined the Ladies' Co-operative Art Guild, London, run by Caroline Hill, mother of the future housing reformer and founder of the National Trust, Octavia...

, a Victorian

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 philanthropist who ran the Old Vic

Old Vic

The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...

 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 her public with condensed versions of well known operas, always sung in English. Among the performers were well-known singers such as Charles Santley

Charles Santley

Sir Charles Santley was an English-born opera and oratorio star with a bravuraFrom the Italian verb bravare, to show off. A florid, ostentatious style or a passage of music requiring technical skill technique who became the most eminent English baritone and male concert singer of the Victorian era...

. These operatic evenings quickly became more popular than the drama that Cons had been staging. In 1898, she recruited her niece Lilian Baylis

Lilian Baylis

Lilian Mary BaylisCH was an English theatrical producer and manager. She managed the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells theatres in London, and ran an opera company, which became the English National Opera , a theatre company, which evolved into the English National Theatre, and a ballet company, which...

 to help run the theatre. At the same time, she appointed Charles Corri

Charles Corri

Charles Corri was an English musician, conductor and arranger. He spent most of his career working for Lilian Baylis, as her musical director at the Old Vic Theatre, and then at Sadler's Wells Opera.-Life and career:...

 as the Old Vic's musical director. Baylis and Corri, despite many disagreements, shared a passionate belief in popularising opera, hitherto generally the preserve of the rich and fashionable. 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. By the early years of the 20th century, the Old Vic was able to present semi-staged versions of Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 operas.

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". In the same year, Baylis obtained a licence allowing the Old Vic to stage full performances of operas. In the 1914–15 season, Baylis staged 16 operas and 16 plays (13 of which were by Shakespeare). In the years after the First World War, Baylis's Shakespearean productions, which starred some of the leading actors from London's West End

West End theatre

West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

, attracted national attention, as her shoe-string opera productions did not. The opera, however, remained her first priority. The actor-manager

Actor-manager

An actor-manager is a leading actor who sets up their own permanent theatrical company and manages the company's business and financial arrangements, sometimes taking over the management of a theatre, to perform plays of their own choice and in which they will usually star...

 Robert Atkins

Robert Atkins (actor)

Sir Robert Atkins, CBE was an English actor, producer and director.Born in Dulwich, London, England, Atkins was most famous for his participation in the theatre. An early graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he also appeared many times on film and in television, though not with the...

, who worked closely with Baylis on her Shakespearean productions, recalled, "Opera, on Thursday and Saturday nights, played to bulging houses."

Vic-Wells

By the 1920s it was clear to Baylis 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

Islington

Islington is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street...

 on the other side of London from the Old Vic, and conceived the ambition to run it in tandem with her existing theatre.

Baylis set up a public appeal for funds in 1925, and with the help of the Carnegie Trust

Carnegie United Kingdom Trust

Carnegie United Kingdom Trust is a charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom, established by Scottish-born American steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie on the model of his U.S. foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York....

 and many others acquired the freehold of Sadler's Wells. Work started on the site in 1926 and by Christmas 1930 a completely new theatre seating 1,640 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

Carmen

Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...

. Eighteen operas were staged during the first season.

The new theatre was more expensive to run than the Old Vic; 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. Baylis strove to improve operatic standards, while at the same time fending off attempts by Sir Thomas Beecham

Thomas Beecham

Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...

 to absorb the opera company into a joint enterprise with Covent Garden, where he was in command. She was at first tempted by the financial security the proposal seemed to offer, but was convinced by her friends and advisers such as Edward J. Dent

Edward Joseph Dent

Edward Joseph Dent, generally known by his initials as E. J. Dent was a British writer on music....

 and Clive Carey

Clive Carey

Francis Clive Savill Carey CBE , known as Clive Carey, was a British baritone, singing teacher, composer, opera producer and folk song collector.-Biography:Clive Carey was born at Sible Hedingham, Essex in 1883...

 that it was not in the interests of her regular audience. This view received strong support from the press; The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

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."
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 the opera and ballet company, the latter of which had been founded by Baylis and Ninette de Valois

Ninette de Valois

Dame Ninette de Valois, OM, CH, DBE, FRAD, FISTD was an Irish-born British dancer, teacher, choreographer and director of classical ballet...

 in 1930. Lawrance Collingwood

Lawrance Collingwood

Lawrance Arthur Collingwood CBE was an English conductor, composer and record producer.Lawrance Collingwood was born in London and became a choirboy at Westminster Abbey. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Exeter College, Oxford...

 joined Corri as resident conductor, and with the increased number of productions, guest conductors were recruited, including Geoffrey Toye

Geoffrey Toye

Edward Geoffrey Toye , better known as Geoffrey Toye, was an English conductor, composer and opera producer....

 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. Among the singers in the opera company were Joan Cross

Joan Cross

Joan Cross was an English soprano, closely associated with the operas of Benjamin Britten. She also sang in the Italian and German operatic repertoires. She later became a musical administrator, taking on the direction of the Sadler's Wells Opera Company.-Career:Cross was born in London...

 and Edith Coates

Edith Coates

Edith Coates OBE was an English operatic mezzo-soprano. A highly gifted actress with a striking stage presence, Coates initially found success in larger dramatic roles before transitioning into portraying mainly character parts in the 1950s. She began her career with Lilian Baylis's opera company...

. In the 1930s, the company presented standard repertoire works including operas by Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

, Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

, Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 and Puccini

Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...

, lighter works by Balfe

Michael William Balfe

Michael William Balfe was an Irish composer, best-remembered for his opera The Bohemian Girl.After a short career as a violinist, Balfe pursued an operatic singing career, while he began to compose. In a career spanning more than 40 years, he composed 38 operas, almost 250 songs and other works...

, Donizetti

Gaetano Donizetti

Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...

, Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

 and Johann Strauss

Johann Strauss II

Johann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...

, some novelties, among which were operas by Holst

Gustav Holst

Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....

, Ethel Smyth

Ethel Smyth

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth, DBE was an English composer and a leader of the women's suffrage movement.- Early career :...

 and Charles Villiers Stanford

Charles Villiers Stanford

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer who was particularly notable for his choral music. He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.- Life :...

, and an unusual attempt at staging an oratorio, Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

's Elijah

Elijah (oratorio)

Elijah, in German: Elias, is an oratorio written by Felix Mendelssohn in 1846 for the Birmingham Festival. It depicts various events in the life of the Biblical prophet Elijah, taken from the books 1 Kings and 2 Kings in the Old Testament....

.

In November 1937 Baylis died of a heart attack. Her three companies continued under the direction of her appointees, Tyrone Guthrie

Tyrone Guthrie

Sir William Tyrone Guthrie was an English theatrical director instrumental in the founding of the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, at his family's home, Annaghmakerrig, in County Monaghan, Ireland.-Life and career: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. 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 end of the war the company toured continuously, visiting 87 venues. It was led by Joan Cross, who managed the company and when necessary sang leading soprano roles in its productions. The size of the company was increased to 50 and then to 80. By 1945 its members included singers from a new generation such as Peter Pears

Peter Pears

Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears CBE was an English tenor who was knighted in 1978. His career was closely associated with the composer Edward Benjamin Britten....

 and Owen Brannigan

Owen Brannigan

Owen Brannigan OBE was an English bass, known in opera for buffo roles and in concert for a wide range of solo parts in music ranging from Henry Purcell to Michael Tippett...

, and the conductor Reginald Goodall

Reginald Goodall

Sir Reginald Goodall was an English conductor, noted for his performances of the operas of Richard Wagner and conducting the premieres of several operas by Benjamin Britten.-Biography:...

.

Sadler's Wells Opera

As the war drew to an end, the government considered the future of opera in Britain. Like Sadler's Wells, the Royal Opera House had presented no opera or ballet since 1939. The Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA

Arts Council of Great Britain

The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. The Arts Council of Great Britain was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England , the Scottish Arts Council, and the Arts Council of Wales...

), the official body charged with dispensing the modest public subsidy recently introduced, considered its options and concluded that a new Covent Garden company should be established. It was to be a year-round, permanent ensemble, singing in English, instead of the short, starry international seasons of pre-war years. Many saw this as an opportunity to merge the two companies, as the modus operandi of the new Covent Garden company was now similar to that of Sadler's Wells. However, David Webster

David Webster (opera manager)

Sir David Webster was the chief executive of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, from 1945 to 1970. He played a key part in the establishment of the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera companies....

, 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. To him the old company was worthy but "dowdy" and "stodgy". Even with a policy of singing in English, he believed he could assemble a better company. 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.

The continued existence of Sadler's Wells Opera was threatened by divisions within the company. Cross announced her intention to re-open Sadler's Wells theatre with Peter Grimes

Peter Grimes

Peter Grimes is an opera by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto adapted by Montagu Slater from the Peter Grimes section of George Crabbe's poem The Borough...

, by the young Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

, with herself and Pears in the leading roles; there were many complaints from company members about supposed favouritism and the "cacophony" of Britten's score. Peter Grimes opened in June 1945 and was hailed by public and critics; its box-office takings matched or exceeded those for La bohème

La bohème

La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...

and Madame Butterfly

Madama Butterfly

Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...

, which were being staged concurrently by the company. 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

English Opera Group

The English Opera Group was a small company of British musicians formed in 1947 by the composer Benjamin Britten for the purpose of presenting his and other, primarily British, composers' operatic works. The group later expanded in order to present larger-scale works, and was renamed the English...

. The departure of the ballet company to Covent Garden two months later deprived Sadler's Wells of an important source of income; the ballet had been profitable and had since its inception subsidised the opera company.

Clive Carey, who had been in Australia during the war, was brought back to replace Joan Cross and rebuild the company after its wartime privations and recent departures. 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". In the same year The Times Literary Supplement

The Times Literary Supplement

The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...

asked whether the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells companies would stick modestly to their old bases "or shall they boldly embrace the ideal of a National Theatre and a National Opera in English?" Carey left in 1947 and his place at the head of the company was taken in January 1948 by a triumvirate comprising James Robertson

James Robertson (conductor)

James Robertson CBE was an English conductor, best known as musical director of Sadler's Wells Opera.Robertson was born in Liverpool and was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge, before studying music at the Leipzig Conservatory and the Royal College of Music in London...

 as musical director, Michael Mudie as his assistant conductor and Norman Tucker

Norman Tucker

Norman Walter Gwynn Tucker was an English musician, administrator and translator. Trained as a concert pianist, he was invited to join Sadler's Wells Opera in 1947 in an administrative role, and from 1948 to 1966 he was the managerial head of the company.His translations of operas new to the...

 in charge of administration. From October 1948, Tucker was given sole control. Mudie became ill, and the young Charles Mackerras

Charles Mackerras

Sir Alan Charles Maclaurin Mackerras, AC, CH, CBE was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan...

 was appointed to deputise for him.

By 1950, Sadler's Wells was receiving a public subsidy of £40,000 a year; Covent Garden received £145,000. Tucker had to give up the option of staging the premiere of Britten's Billy Budd

Billy Budd (opera)

Billy Budd is an opera by Benjamin Britten, from a libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, was first performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London on 1 December 1951. It is based on the short novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville....

, lacking the resources to do it justice. He was keen to improve the dramatic aspects of opera production, and eminent theatrical directors including Michel Saint-Denis

Michel Saint-Denis

Michel Saint-Denis , dit Jacques Duchesne, was a French actor, theater director, and drama theorist whose ideas on actor training have had a profound influence on the development of European theater from the 1930s on.Michel Saint-Denis was born in Beauvais, France, the nephew of Jacques Copeau, who...

, George Devine

George Devine

George Alexander Cassady Devine CBE was an extremely influential theatrical manager, director, teacher and actor in London from the late 1940s until his death. He also worked in the media of TV and film.-Biography:...

 and Glen Byam Shaw

Glen Byam Shaw

Glen Byam Shaw was an English actor and theatre director, known for his dramatic productions in the 1950s and his operatic productions in the 1960s and later....

 worked on Sadler's Wells productions in the 1950s. New repertoire was explored; at Mackerras's urging Janáček

Leoš Janácek

Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...

's Káťa Kabanová

Káta Kabanová

Káťa Kabanová is an opera in three acts, with music by Leoš Janáček to a libretto by Vincenc Červinka, based on The Storm, a play by Alexander Ostrovsky. The opera was also largely inspired by Janáček's love for Kamila Stösslová...

was presented for the first time in Britain. Standards and company morale were improving; The Manchester Guardian summed up the 1950–51 London opera season as "Excitement at Sadler's Wells: Lack of Distinction at Covent Garden" and judged Sadler's Wells to have moved "into the front rank of opera houses".

The company continued to leave Rosebery Avenue for summer tours to British cities and towns. The Arts Council (successor to CEMA) was sensitive to the charge that since 1945 far fewer opera performances had been given in the provinces. The small Carl Rosa Opera Company

Carl Rosa Opera Company

The Carl Rosa Opera Company was founded in 1873 by Carl August Nicholas Rosa, a German-born musical impresario, to present opera in English in London and the British provinces. The company survived Rosa's death in 1889, and continued to present opera in English on tour until 1960, when it was...

 toured constantly, but the Covent Garden company visited only those few cities with theatres big enough to accommodate it. In the mid-1950s renewed calls were made for a reorganisation of Britain's opera companies. There were proposals for a new home for Sadler's Wells on the South Bank of the Thames near the Royal Festival Hall

Royal Festival Hall

The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,900-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected...

, but these fell through because the government was unwilling to fund the building. Once again there was serious talk of merging Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells. The Sadler's Wells board countered by proposing a closer working arrangement with Carl Rosa. When it became clear that this would require the Sadler's Wells company to tour for 30 weeks every year, and practically destroy its presence on the London opera scene, Tucker, his deputy Stephen Arlen

Stephen Arlen

Stephen Arlen was an English theatre manager and operatic administrator. Originally an actor, he took up backstage work as a stage manager, and in the years after the Second World War was in charge of stage management at the Old Vic.He was persuaded to join Sadler's Wells Opera as an...

, and his musical director Alexander Gibson

Alexander Gibson (conductor)

Sir Alexander Gibson, CBE was a Scottish conductor and opera intendant.Gibson was born in Motherwell and studied music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, as well as in London, Salzburg and Siena, Italy...

 resigned. The proposals were modified, and the three withdrew their resignations. In 1960, the Carl Rosa Company was wound up; Sadler's Wells took over some of its members and many of its touring dates, setting up "two interchangeable companies of equal standing", one of which played at Sadler's Wells theatre while the other was on the road.
By the late 1950s, Covent Garden was gradually abandoning its policy of productions in the vernacular; such stars as Maria Callas

Maria Callas

Maria Callas was an American-born Greek soprano and one of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century. She combined an impressive bel canto technique, a wide-ranging voice and great dramatic gifts...

 would not relearn their roles in English. This made it easier for Tucker to point up the difference between the two London opera companies. While Covent Garden engaged international stars, Sadler's Wells focused on young British and Commonwealth performers. Colin Davis

Colin Davis

Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett....

 was appointed musical director in succession to Gibson in 1961. The repertoire continued to mix the staples and the unfamiliar. Novelties in Davis's time included Pizzetti

Ildebrando Pizzetti

Ildebrando Pizzetti was an Italian composer of classical music.- Biography :Pizzetti was born in Parma in 1880. He was part of the "Generation of 1880" along with Ottorino Respighi and Gian Francesco Malipiero. They were among the first Italian composers in some time whose primary contributions...

's Murder in the Cathedral

Assassinio nella cattedrale

Assassinio nella cattedrale is an opera in two acts and an intermezzo by the Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti. The libretto is an adaptation by the composer of an Italian translation of T.S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral. The opera was first performed at La Scala, Milan on 1 March 1958...

, Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

's Oedipus Rex

Oedipus rex (opera)

Oedipus rex is an "Opera-oratorio after Sophocles" by Igor Stravinsky, scored for orchestra, speaker, soloists, and male chorus. The libretto, based on Sophocles's tragedy, was written by Jean Cocteau in French and then translated by Abbé Jean Daniélou into Latin...

, Richard Rodney Bennett

Richard Rodney Bennett

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, CBE is an English composer renowned for his film scores and his jazz performance as much as for his challenging concert works...

's The Mines of Sulphur

The Mines of Sulphur

The Mines of Sulphur is an opera in three acts by Richard Rodney Bennett, his first full-length opera, composed in 1963. Beverley Cross wrote the libretto, based on his play Scarlet Ribbons, at the suggestion of Colin Graham, who eventually directed the first production in 1965...

and more Janáček. Sadler's Wells's traditional policy of giving all operas in English continued, with only two exceptions: Oedipus Rex, which was sung in Latin, and Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...

's L'Orfeo, sung in Italian, for reasons not clear to the press. In January 1962, the company gave its first Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...

 opera, Iolanthe

Iolanthe

Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh collaboration of the fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan....

; it opened on the day on which the Savoy operas came out of copyright and the D'Oyly Carte

D'Oyly Carte Opera Company

The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was a professional light opera company that staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas. The company performed nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere, from the 1870s until it closed in 1982. It was revived in 1988 and...

 monopoly ended. It was well received (it was successfully revived for many seasons until 1978) and was followed by a production of The Mikado

The Mikado

The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...

in May of the same year.

The Islington theatre was by now clearly too small to allow the company to achieve any further growth. A study conducted for the Arts Council reported that in the late 1960s the two Sadler's Wells companies comprised 278 salaried performers and 62 guest singers. The company had experience of playing in a large West End theatre; in 1958 its sell-out production of The Merry Widow

The Merry Widow

The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...

had transferred to the 2,351-seat London Coliseum for a summer season. Ten years later the lease of the Coliseum became available; Stephen Arlen, who had succeeded Tucker as managing director, was the driving force behind moving the company. After intense negotiations and fund-raising, a ten-year lease was signed in 1968.

One of the company's last productions at the Islington theatre was Wagner's The Mastersingers

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an opera in three acts, written and composed by Richard Wagner. It is among the longest operas still commonly performed today, usually taking around four and a half hours. It was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich, on June 21,...

, conducted by Goodall in 1968, which 40 years later was described by Gramophone magazine as "legendary". The company left Sadler's Wells with a revival of the work with which it had re-opened the theatre in 1945, Peter Grimes. Its last performance at the Rosebery Avenue theatre was on 15 June 1968.

Coliseum

The company, retaining the title "Sadler's Wells Opera", opened at the Coliseum on 21 August 1968, with a new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...

, directed by Sir John Gielgud

John Gielgud

Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

. This was not well received, but the company rapidly established itself with a succession of highly praised productions. Stephen Arlen died in January 1972, and was succeeded as managing director by Lord Harewood

George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood

George Henry Hubert Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, KBE AM , styled The Hon. George Lascelles before 1929 and Viscount Lascelles between 1929 and 1947, was the elder son of the 6th Earl of Harewood , and Princess Mary, Princess Royal, the only daughter of King George V of the United Kingdom and...

.

The success of the 1968 Mastersingers was followed in the 1970s by the company's first Ring

Der Ring des Nibelungen

Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...

cycle, conducted by Goodall, with a cast including Norman Bailey, Rita Hunter

Rita Hunter

Rita Hunter CBE was a British operatic dramatic soprano.Rita Hunter was born in Wallasey, Merseyside. She studied singing in Liverpool with Edwin Francis and later in London with Redvers Llewellyn and Clive Carey...

 and Alberto Remedios

Alberto Remedios

Alberto Remedios is a British former operatic tenor, especially noted for his interpretations of Wagner's heldentenor roles....

. The cycle had a new translation by Andrew Porter

Andrew Porter (music critic)

Andrew Porter, born 26 August 1928, in Cape Town, South Africa, is a British music critic, scholar, organist, and opera director. He studied organ at University College, Oxford University, in the late nineteen-forties, then began writing music criticism for various London newspapers, including The...

 and designs by Ralph Koltai. In Harewood's view, among the highlights of the first ten years at the Coliseum were the Ring, Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

's War and Peace, and Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

's Salome

Salome (opera)

Salome is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by the composer, based on Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. Strauss dedicated the opera to his friend Sir Edgar Speyer....

and Der Rosenkavalier

Der Rosenkavalier

Der Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...

.

The company's musical director from 1970 to 1977 was Charles Mackerras. Harewood praised his exceptional versatility, with a range "from The House of the Dead

From the House of the Dead

From the House of the Dead is an opera by Leoš Janáček, in three acts. The libretto was translated and adapted by the composer from the novel by Dostoyevsky...

to Patience

Patience (opera)

Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride, is a comic opera in two acts with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. First performed at the Opera Comique, London, on 23 April 1881, it moved to the 1,292-seat Savoy Theatre on 10 October 1881, where it was the first theatrical production in the...

." The critic Alan Blyth

Alan Blyth

Geoffrey Alan Blyth was an English music critic, author, and musicologist who was particularly known for his writings within the field of opera. He graduated from the Rugby School before attending the University of Oxford where he studied with Jack Westrup...

 described him as an expert on authenticity in performing Handel, a pioneer of Janáček, "a scholarly Mozartian … a sure advocate of French opera, a strong, no-nonsense interpreter of the Viennese classics, an expert in early 19th-century operas by Donizetti and others, and an abiding admirer of Gilbert and Sullivan". Among the operas he conducted for the company were Handel's Julius Caesar

Giulio Cesare

Giulio Cesare in Egitto , commonly known simply as Giulio Cesare, is an Italian opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel in 1724...

starring Janet Baker

Janet Baker

Dame Janet Abbott Baker, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer.She was particularly closely associated with baroque and early Italian opera and the works of Benjamin Britten...

 and Valerie Masterson

Valerie Masterson

Margaret Valerie Masterson , is a retired English opera singer, a lecturer and Vice-President of British Youth Opera. After study in Italy, she began to sing opera in Europe...

; five Janáček operas; The Marriage of Figaro with pioneering use of 18th century performing style; Massenet

Jules Massenet

Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...

's Werther

Werther

Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe....

; Donizetti's Mary Stuart

Maria Stuarda

Maria Stuarda is a tragic opera, , in two acts, by Gaetano Donizetti, to a libretto by Giuseppe Bardari, based on Friedrich Schiller's 1800 play Maria Stuart....

with Baker; and Sullivan's Patience. The company took the production of the last to the Vienna Festival

Vienna Festival

The Wiener Festwochen is a cultural festival in Vienna that takes place every year for five or six weeks in May and June.The Wiener Festwochen was established in 1951, when Vienna was still occupied by the four Allies...

 in 1975, along with Britten's Gloriana

Gloriana

Gloriana is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten to an English libretto by William Plomer, based on Elizabeth and Essex by Lytton Strachey...

. Mackerras was succeeded as musical director by Sir Charles Groves

Charles Groves

Sir Charles Barnard Groves CBE was an English conductor. He was known for the breadth of his repertoire and for encouraging contemporary composers and young conductors....

, who was unwell and unhappy during his brief tenure in 1978–79. Groves was relieved to hand over to Mark Elder

Mark Elder

Sir Mark Philip Elder, CBE is a British conductor. He is the music director of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, England.-Biography:Elder was born in Hexham, Northumberland, England, the son of a dentist...

, who found him "immensely encouraging and supportive".

From the outset, Arlen and then Harewood had wanted to change the company's name to reflect the fact that it was no longer based at Sadler's Wells theatre. Byam Shaw commented, "The one major setback the Sadler's Wells Opera Company suffered from its transplant was that unheeding taxi drivers kept on taking their patrons up to Rosebery Avenue" Harewood considered it an elementary rule that "you must not carry the name of one theatre if you are playing in another one." Covent Garden, protective of its status, objected to the suggestion that the Sadler's Wells company should be called "The British National Opera" or "The National Opera", although neither Scottish Opera

Scottish Opera

Scottish Opera is the national opera company of Scotland, and one of the five national performing arts companies funded by the Scottish Government...

 nor the Welsh National Opera

Welsh National Opera

Welsh National Opera is an opera company founded in Cardiff, Wales in 1943. The WNO tours Wales, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world extensively. Annually, it gives more than 120 performances of eight main stage operas to a combined audience of around 150,000 people...

 opposed such a change. Eventually the matter was decided by the British government, and the title "English National Opera" was approved. It was adopted by the company's board in November 1974. In 1977, in response to demand for more opera productions in English provincial cities, a second company was established. It was based at Leeds

Leeds

Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

 in northern England, and was known as ENO North. Under Harewood's guidance it flourished, and in 1981 it became an independent company, Opera North

Opera North

Opera North is an English opera company based in Leeds. The company's home theatre is the Leeds Grand Theatre, but it also presents regular seasons in several other cities, at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, the Lowry Centre, Salford Quays and the Theatre Royal, Newcastle...

.

1980–99

In 1982, at Elder's instigation, Harewood appointed David Pountney

David Pountney

David Pountney is a British theatre and opera director and librettist internationally known for his productions of rarely performed operas and new productions of classic works...

 director of productions. In 1985 Harewood retired (becoming chairman of ENO's board the following year) and Peter Jonas

Peter Jonas (director)

Sir Peter Jonas, CBE, FRCM, FRNCM, FRSA, b.14 October 1946, is a British Arts Administrator and opera company director.-Career:Jonas studied at Worth School, and took an English Literature degree at the University of Sussex...

 succeeded him as managing director. The 1980s triumvirate of Elder, Pountney and Jonas, often called the "Powerhouse", initiated a new era of "director's opera". The triumvirate favoured productions described by Elder as "groundbreaking, risky, probing and theatrically effective" and by the director Nicholas Hytner

Nicholas Hytner

Sir Nicholas Robert Hytner is an English film and theatre producer and director. He has been the artistic director of London's National Theatre since 2003.-Biography:...

 as "Euro-bollocks that never has to be comprehensible to anybody but the people sitting out there conceiving." Directors who did not, in Harewood's phrase, "want to splash paint in the face of the public" were sidelined. A survey in the 1980s showed that the two things that ENO audiences most disliked were poor diction and the extremes of "director's opera".

In the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century...

, Barry Millington has described the Powerhouse style as: "arresting images of dislocated reality, an inexhaustible repertory of stage contrivances, a determination to explore the social and psychological issues latent in the works, and above all an abundant sense of theatricality." As examples Millington mentions "Rusalka

Rusalka

In Slavic mythology, a rusalka was a female ghost, water nymph, succubus, or mermaid-like demon that dwelled in a waterway....

(1983), with its Edwardian nursery setting and Freudian undertones, and Hänsel und Gretel (1987), its dream pantomime peopled by fantasy figures from the children's imagination … Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (opera)

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is an opera in four acts by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Op.29. The libretto was written by Alexander Preis and the composer, and is based on the story Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov. The opera is sometimes referred to informally as Lady Macbeth...

(1987) and Wozzeck

Wozzeck

Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...

(1990) exemplified an approach to production in which grotesque caricature jostles with forceful emotional engagement".

Poor average box-office sales led to a financial crisis, which was exacerbated by backstage industrial relations problems. After 1983 the company ceased touring to other British venues. Assessing the achievements of the Powerhouse years, Tom Sutcliffe

Tom Sutcliffe (opera critic)

Tom Sutcliffe is an English opera critic, author and journalist. He is also a current member of the General Synod of the Church of England, first elected for the Diocese of Southwark in 1990...

 wrote in The Musical Times

The Musical Times

The Musical Times is an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom. It is currently the oldest such journal that is still publishing in the UK, having been published continuously since 1844. It was published as The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular until...

:

Productions during the 1980s included the company's first presentations of Pelléas and Mélisande

Pelléas et Mélisande (opera)

Pelléas et Mélisande is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande...

(1981), Parsifal (1986) and Billy Budd

Billy Budd (opera)

Billy Budd is an opera by Benjamin Britten, from a libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, was first performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London on 1 December 1951. It is based on the short novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville....

(1988). 1980s productions that remained in the repertory for many years included Xerxes

Serse

Serse is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was first performed in London on 15 April 1738. The Italian libretto was adapted by an unknown hand from that by Silvio Stampiglia for an earlier opera of the same name by Giovanni Bononcini in 1694...

directed by Hytner, and Rigoletto

Rigoletto

Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...

and The Mikado

The Mikado

The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...

directed by Jonathan Miller

Jonathan Miller

Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE is a British theatre and opera director, author, physician, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. Trained as a physician in the late 1950s, he first came to prominence in the 1960s with his role in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with fellow writers and...

. In 1984 ENO toured the United States; the travelling company, led by Elder, consisted of 360 people; they performed Gloriana

Gloriana

Gloriana is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten to an English libretto by William Plomer, based on Elizabeth and Essex by Lytton Strachey...

, War and Peace, The Turn of the Screw

The Turn of the Screw (opera)

The Turn of the Screw is a 20th century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, "wife of the artist John Piper, who had been a friend of the composer since 1935 and had provided designs for several of the operas". The libretto is based on the novella...

, Rigoletto and Patience. This was the first British company to be invited to appear at the Metropolitan Opera

Metropolitan Opera House (Lincoln Center)

The Metropolitan Opera House is an opera house located on Broadway at Lincoln Square in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the theater opened in 1966. It replaced the former Metropolitan Opera House at Broadway and 39th St...

 in New York, where Patience received a standing ovation and Miller's production of Rigoletto, depicting the characters as mafiosi, was greeted with a mixture of enthusiasm and booing. In 1990 ENO was the first major foreign opera company to tour the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, performing the Miller production of The Turn of the Screw, Pountney's production of Macbeth

Macbeth (opera)

Macbeth is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and additions by Andrea Maffei, based on Shakespeare's play of the same name...

, and Hytner's much-revived Xerxes.

The Powerhouse era ended in 1992, when all three of the triumvirate left at the same time. The new general director was Dennis Marks, formerly head of music programmes at the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

; the new music director was Sian Edwards

Sian Edwards

Sian Edwards is an English conductor, best known as music director of English National Opera in the 1990s.Edwards was born in West Chiltington, West Sussex. She studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and later with the conductors Sir Charles Groves, Ilya Musin and Neeme Järvi...

; Pountney's post of director of productions was not filled. Marks, inheriting a large financial deficit from his predecessors, worked to restore the company's finances, concentrating on restoring ticket sales to sustainable levels. A new production by Miller of Der Rosenkavalier was a critical and financial success, as was a staging of Massenet's Don Quixote

Don Quichotte

Don Quichotte is an opera in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Caïn.Massenet's comédie-héroïque, like so many other dramatized versions of the story of Don Quixote, relates only indirectly to the great novel by Miguel de Cervantes...

, described by the critic Hugh Canning as "the kind of old-fashioned theatre magic which the hair-shirted Powerhouse regime despised".

Marks was obliged to spend much time and effort in securing the funding for an essential restoration of the Coliseum, a condition on which ENO had acquired the freehold of the theatre in 1992. At the same time the Arts Council was contemplating a cut in the number of opera performances in London, at the expense of ENO, rather than Covent Garden. By increasing ticket sales in successive years, Marks demonstrated that the Arts Council's proposition was unrealistic. After what The Independent

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

described as "a sustained period of criticism and sniping at the ENO by music critics", Sian Edwards resigned as music director at the end of 1995; she was succeeded by Paul Daniel

Paul Daniel

Paul Daniel CBE is an English conductor. He is particularly noted for performances and recordings of opera and of British music....

. In 1997, Marks resigned. No reason was announced, but it was thought that he and the ENO board had disagreed about his plans to move the company from the Coliseum to a purpose-built new home. Daniel took over the management of the company until a new general director was appointed.

Daniel inherited from Marks a company thriving artistically and financially. The 1997–98 season played to 75 per cent capacity and made a surplus of £150,000. Daniel led the campaign against yet another proposal to merge Covent Garden and ENO, which was rapidly abandoned. In 1998 Nicholas Payne, director of opera at Covent Garden, was appointed to the post of ENO general director. Productions in the 1990s included the company's first stagings of Beatrice and Benedict

Béatrice et Bénédict

Béatrice et Bénédict is an opera in two acts by Hector Berlioz. Berlioz wrote the French libretto himself, based closely on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing....

(1990), Wozzeck (1990), Jenůfa

Jenufa

Jenůfa is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček to a Czech libretto by the composer, based on the play Její pastorkyňa by Gabriela Preissová. It was first performed at the Brno Theater, Brno, 21 January 1904...

(1994), A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream (opera)

A Midsummer Night's Dream is an opera with music by Benjamin Britten and set to a libretto adapted by the composer and Peter Pears from William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream...

(1995), Die Soldaten

Die Soldaten

Die Soldaten is a four act opera in German by German composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, based on the 1776 play by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. It is dedicated to Hans Rosbaud. Zimmermann himself faithfully adapted the play into the libretto, the only changes to the text being repeats and small cuts...

(1996), and Dialogues of the Carmelites

Dialogues of the Carmelites

Dialogues of the Carmelites , is an opera in three acts by Francis Poulenc. In 1953, M. Valcarenghi approached Poulenc to commission a ballet for La Scala in Milan; when Poulenc found the proposed subject uninspiring, Valcarenghi suggested instead a screenplay by Georges Bernanos, based on the...

(1999). Co-productions, enabling opera houses to share the costs of joint enterprises, became important in this decade; in 1993 ENO and Welsh National Opera collaborated on productions of Don Pasquale

Don Pasquale

Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....

, Ariodante

Ariodante

Ariodante is an opera seria in three acts by Handel. The anonymous Italian libretto was based on a work by Antonio Salvi, which in turn was adapted from Canti 5 and 6 of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso...

and The Two Widows

The Two Widows

The Two Widows is a two-act Czech opera by Bedřich Smetana based on the libretto of Emanuel Züngel. The libretto is based on Jean Pierre Felicien Mallefille's one-act play "Les deux veuves." The opera was composed between June 1873 and January 1874, with its first première on March 27th, 1874 at...

.

21st century

Martin Smith, a millionaire with a finance background, was appointed chairman of the ENO board in 2001. He proved to be an expert fund-raiser, and personally donated a million pounds to the cost of refurbishing the Coliseum. He and Payne came into conflict over the effect on revenue of the "director's opera" productions that Payne insisted on commissioning. The most extreme case was a production of Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...

directed by Calixto Bieito

Calixto Bieito

Calixto Bieito is a Spanish theater director known for his "radical" interpretations of classic operas.-Biography:...

 in 2001, despised by critics and public alike; Michael Kennedy

Michael Kennedy (music critic)

Dr. George Michael Sinclair Kennedy CBE is an English biographer, journalist and writer on classical music. He joined the Daily Telegraph at the age of 15 in 1941, and began writing music criticism for it in 1948...

 described it as "a new nadir in vulgar abuse of a masterpiece," and other reviewers agreed with him. Payne insisted, "I think it's one of the best things we've done. … It's exceeded my expectations." In the arts pages of The Financial Times, Martin Hoyle wrote of Payne's "exquisite tunnel vision" and expressed "the concern of those of us who value the true people's opera". Payne remained adamant that opera lovers who came to the ENO for a "nice, pleasant evening … had come to the wrong place." The differences between Smith and Payne were irreconcilable, and Payne was forced to resign in July 2002.

The successor to Payne was Sean Doran

Sean Doran

Seán Doran is an artistic director working in today's international arts world.After commencing a career as a clarinettist and conductor of a music-theatre company in London, of which Sir Simon Rattle was Patron , Doran was appointed to directorships of four major international arts festivals...

, whose appointment was controversial because he had no experience of running an opera company. He attracted newspaper headlines with unusual operatic events, described by admirers as "unexpected coups" and by detractors as "stunts"; a performance of the third act of The Valkyrie

Die Walküre

Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...

played to 20,000 rock music

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

 fans at the Glastonbury Festival

Glastonbury Festival

The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, commonly abbreviated to Glastonbury or even Glasto, is a performing arts festival that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England, best known for its contemporary music, but also for dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts.The...

. In December 2003 Daniel announced that he would leave at the end of his contract in 2005. Oleg Caetani

Oleg Caetani

Oleg Caetani is a conductor of Ukrainian and Italian descent. He is the son of Igor Markevitch and Donna Topazia Caetani, Markevitch's second wife, who is descended from a Roman family that included the early 14th-century Pope Boniface VIII. Caetani has chosen to use his mother's family name to...

 was announced as the next music director, from January 2006.

In 2004 the company embarked on its second production of Wagner's Ring. After concert performances over the previous three seasons, the four operas of the cycle were staged at the Coliseum in 2004 and 2005 in productions by Phyllida Lloyd

Phyllida Lloyd

Phyllida Lloyd CBE is an English director, best known for her work in theatre and as the director of the most financially successful British film ever released, Mamma Mia!.-Career:...

, with designs by Richard Hudson

Richard Hudson (stage designer)

Richard Hudson is a Zimbabwean stage designer best known for his work for The Lion King, which won him the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design....

, in a new translation by Jeremy Sams

Jeremy Sams

Jeremy Sams is a British film director, writer, translator, orchestrator, musical director, film composer, and lyricist....

. The first instalments of the cycle were criticised as poorly sung and conducted, but by the time Twilight of the Gods

Götterdämmerung

is the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four operas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen...

was staged in 2005, matters were thought to have improved: "Paul Daniel's command of the score is more authoritative than could have been predicted from his uneven accounts of the previous operas." The production attracted generally bad notices. The four operas were given individual runs, but were never played as a complete cycle.
During the first decade of the century, the company repeated the experiment, previously tried in 1932, of staging oratorios and other choral works as operatic performances. Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

's St. John Passion

St. John Passion

Several composers have written works known by the title St John Passion, which denotes a passion based on the Gospel of John...

was given in 2000, followed by Verdi's Requiem

Requiem (Verdi)

The Messa da Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi is a musical setting of the Roman Catholic funeral mass for four soloists, double choir and orchestra. It was composed in memory of Alessandro Manzoni, an Italian poet and novelist much admired by Verdi. The first performance in San Marco in Milan on 22 May...

(2000), Tippett

Michael Tippett

Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...

's A Child of Our Time

A Child of Our Time

A Child of Our Time is an oratorio written by Michael Tippett between 1939 and 1941."After more than ten years of thoughtful planning, Michael Tippett summed up his musical, political, spiritual and philosophical beliefs in his first oratorio, A Child of Our Time...

(2005) and Handel's Jephtha

Jephtha

Jephthah is a character in the Old Testament's Book of Judges, serving as a judge over Israel for a period of six years . He lived in Gilead and was a member of the Tribe of Manasseh. His father's name was also Gilead...

(2005) and Messiah

Messiah (Handel)

Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...

(2009). ENO responded to the increased interest in Handel's operas, staging Alcina

Alcina

Alcina is an opera seria by George Frideric Handel. Handel used the libretto of L'isola di Alcina, an opera that was set in 1728 in Rome by Riccardo Broschi, which he acquired the year after, during his travels in Italy...

(2002), Agrippina

Agrippina (opera)

Agrippina is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel, from a libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani. Composed for the Venice Carnevale season, the opera tells the story of Agrippina, the mother of Nero, as she plots the downfall of the Roman Emperor Claudius and the installation of...

(2006) and Partenope

Partenope

Partenope is an opera by George Frideric Handel, first performed at the King's Theatre in London on 24 February 1730.-Background:...

(2008). In 2003 the company staged its first production of Berlioz

Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...

's massive opera The Trojans

Les Troyens

Les Troyens is a French opera in five acts by Hector Berlioz. The libretto was written by Berlioz himself, based on Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid...

, with Sarah Connolly

Sarah Connolly

Sarah Patricia Connolly CBE is an English mezzo-soprano.Sarah Connolly was educated at Queen Margaret's School, York and then studied piano and singing at the Royal College of Music, of which she is now a Fellow...

 as "a supremely eloquent, genuinely tragic Dido".

In 2005, after an internal debate that had been going on since 1991, it was announced that surtitles would be introduced at the Coliseum. Surveys had shown that only a quarter of audience members could hear the words clearly. With a few exceptions, including Lesley Garrett

Lesley Garrett

Lesley Garrett CBE is an English musician, broadcaster and media personality.- Early life :Garrett was born in the town of Thorne near Doncaster in South Yorkshire, into a musical family. She attended Thorne Grammar School, where she performed in school plays and musicals. As she grew up she...

 and Andrew Shore

Andrew Shore

Andrew Shore, is an English operatic baritone.After studying at the Royal Northern College of Music and the London Opera Centre, he sang with Opera For All...

, ENO singers of the 21st century were considered to have poorer diction than their predecessors such as Masterson and Derek Hammond-Stroud

Derek Hammond-Stroud

Derek Hammond-Stroud, OBE is an English opera singer best known for his performances of German lieder and opera.-Life and career:...

. Harewood and Pountney had been immovably opposed to surtitles; both believed that opera in English was pointless if it could not be understood; Harewood thought, moreover, that surtitles could undermine the case for a publicly funded opera-in-English company. The editor of Opera

Opera (magazine)

Opera is a monthly British magazine devoted to covering all things related to opera.Based in London, the magazine was founded in 1950 by George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood. It was launched at the house of Richard Buckle, under the imprint 'Ballet Publications Ltd'...

magazine, Rodney Milnes

Rodney Milnes

Rodney Milnes Blumer is an English music critic, musicologist, writer, translator and broadcaster, with a particular interest in opera.He attended Rugby School and Oxford University before working in publishing....

, campaigned against surtitles on the grounds that "singers would give up trying to articulate clearly and audiences would cease focusing on the stage". Despite these objections surtitles were introduced from October 2005.

On 29 November 2005, Doran resigned as artistic director. To replace him, Smith divided the duties between Loretta Tomasi as chief executive and John Berry as artistic director. These elevations from within the organisation were controversial, because they were neither advertised nor cleared at the top level of the Arts Council. Smith received severe press criticism for his action, and in December 2005 he announced his resignation. In the same week, Caetani's appointment as the next ENO music director was cancelled. Berry was at first criticised in the press for his choice of singers for ENO productions, but the appointment of Edward Gardner

Edward Gardner (conductor)

Edward Gardner is a British conductor.Gardner sang as a chorister at Gloucester Cathedral. As a youth, he played piano, clarinet and organ. He attended the King's School, Gloucester and Eton College. At the University of Cambridge, he continued as a music student, and was a choral scholar in...

 as music director from 2007 received considerable praise. The Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

commented that Gardner was "widely credited with breathing fresh life into English National Opera, whose growing reputation under his youthfully innovative hand has seen the house ally itself with outside talent, from Anthony Minghella

Anthony Minghella

Anthony Minghella, CBE was an English film director, playwright and screenwriter. He was Chairman of the Board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007....

's hugely popular Madam Butterfly to Forced Entertainment's production of Philip Glass

Philip Glass

Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...

's Satyagraha

Satyagraha (opera)

Satyagraha is a 1979 opera in three acts for orchestra, chorus and soloists, composed by Philip Glass, with a libretto by Glass and Constance DeJong.Loosely based on the life of Mohandas K...

." Attendance figures recovered, with younger audiences attracted by ENO's marketing schemes. The company's finances improved, with £5 million in reserve funds in April 2009.

Productions in the 2011 season continued the company's traditions of engaging directors with no operatic experience (a well reviewed The Damnation of Faust

The Damnation of Faust

La damnation de Faust , Op. 24 is a work for four solo voices, full seven-part chorus, large children's chorus and orchestra by the French composer Hector Berlioz. He called it a "légende dramatique"...

staged by Terry Gilliam

Terry Gilliam

Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...

 and set in Nazi Germany) and of drastic reinterpretations (a version of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream presented by Christopher Alden

Christopher Alden (director)

Christopher Alden is a radical theater director known for staging revisionist productions of opera. He is the twin brother of David Alden, also an opera director, and belongs to a generation of modernist directors that includes Robert Wilson and Peter Sellars, though Alden retains his own personal...

 as a paedophile parable set in a 1950s boys' school, which divided critical opinion).

Repertoire

The company has aimed to present the standard operatic repertoire, sung in English, and has staged all the major operas of Mozart, Wagner and Puccini, and a wide range of Verdi's operas. Under Mackerras and his successors the Czech repertoire has featured strongly, and a broad range of French and Russian operas has been presented. The company has for decades laid stress on opera as drama, and has avoided operas where vocal display takes precedence over musical and dramatic content. In addition to the operatic staples, ENO has a history of presenting new works, and latterly of commissioning them.

Commissions and premieres

ENO has commissioned more than a dozen operas by composers including Gordon Crosse

Gordon Crosse

Gordon Crosse is an English composer.-Biography:Crosse was born in Bury, Lancashire and in 1961 graduated from St Edmund Hall, Oxford with a first class honours degree in Music. He then undertook two years of postgraduate research on early fifteenth-century music before beginning an academic...

, Iain Hamilton

Iain Hamilton (composer)

Iain Ellis Hamilton was a Scottish composer.He was educated in London where he became an apprentice engineer, and remained in that profession for the next seven years. He undertook the study of music in his spare time...

, Alfred Schnittke

Alfred Schnittke

Alfred Schnittke ; November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso...

, Gavin Bryars

Gavin Bryars

Richard Gavin Bryars is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in, or has produced works in, a variety of styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism.-Early life and career:Born in Goole, East...

, Asian Dub Foundation

Asian Dub Foundation

Asian Dub Foundation are a British electronica band that plays a mix of rapcore, dub, dancehall and ragga, also using rock instruments, acknowledging a punk influence...

 and Nico Muhly

Nico Muhly

Nico Muhly is a contemporary classical music composer, who has worked and recorded with classical and pop/rock musicians. He currently lives in the Lower East Side section of Manhattan in New York City.-Early years:...

. The company's best known world premiere probably remains Peter Grimes

Peter Grimes

Peter Grimes is an opera by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto adapted by Montagu Slater from the Peter Grimes section of George Crabbe's poem The Borough...

in 1945. Subsequent world premieres have included The Mines of Sulphur

The Mines of Sulphur

The Mines of Sulphur is an opera in three acts by Richard Rodney Bennett, his first full-length opera, composed in 1963. Beverley Cross wrote the libretto, based on his play Scarlet Ribbons, at the suggestion of Colin Graham, who eventually directed the first production in 1965...

(1965), The Mask of Orpheus

The Mask of Orpheus

The Mask of Orpheus is an opera with music by Harrison Birtwistle and a libretto by Peter Zinovieff. It was premiered in London at the English National Opera on May 21, 1986 to great critical acclaim. A recorded version conducted by Andrew Davis and Martyn Brabbins has also received good reviews...

(1986), The Silver Tassie (1999), and works by Malcolm Williamson

Malcolm Williamson

Malcolm Benjamin Graham Christopher Williamson AO , CBE was an Australian composer. He was the Master of the Queen's Music from 1975 until his death.-Biography:...

, Iain Hamilton

Iain Hamilton (composer)

Iain Ellis Hamilton was a Scottish composer.He was educated in London where he became an apprentice engineer, and remained in that profession for the next seven years. He undertook the study of music in his spare time...

, David Blake

David Blake (composer)

David Blake is a British composer born in London in 1936. Following National Service Blake learnt Mandarin Chinese and spent one year in Hong Kong. He went on to read music at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where his teachers were Patrick Hadley, Peter Tranchell and Raymond Leppard...

, Robin Holloway

Robin Holloway

Robin Greville Holloway is an English composer.-Early life:From 1952 to 1957, he was a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral...

 and Stephen Oliver. British stage premieres include operas by Verdi (Simon Boccanegra, 1948), Janáček (Káťa Kabanová

Káta Kabanová

Káťa Kabanová is an opera in three acts, with music by Leoš Janáček to a libretto by Vincenc Červinka, based on The Storm, a play by Alexander Ostrovsky. The opera was also largely inspired by Janáček's love for Kamila Stösslová...

, 1951), Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

 (Oedipus Rex

Oedipus rex (opera)

Oedipus rex is an "Opera-oratorio after Sophocles" by Igor Stravinsky, scored for orchestra, speaker, soloists, and male chorus. The libretto, based on Sophocles's tragedy, was written by Jean Cocteau in French and then translated by Abbé Jean Daniélou into Latin...

, 1960), Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

 (War and Peace, 1972) and Phillip Glass (Akhnaten

Akhnaten (opera)

Akhnaten is an opera in three acts based on the life and religious convictions of the pharaoh Akhenaten , written by the American minimalist composer Philip Glass in 1983. Akhnaten had its world premiere on March 24, 1984 at the Stuttgart State Opera, under the German title Echnaton...

, 1985).

Operetta and musicals

From the beginning, the company interspersed serious opera with lighter works. In the early years the "Irish Ring" (The Bohemian Girl

The Bohemian Girl

The Bohemian Girl is an opera composed by Michael William Balfe with a libretto by Alfred Bunn. The plot is loosely based on a Cervantes tale, La Gitanilla.The opera was first produced in London at the Drury Lane Theatre on November 27, 1843...

, The Lily of Killarney

The Lily of Killarney

The Lily of Killarney is an opera in three acts by Julius Benedict. The libretto, by John Oxenford and Dion Boucicault, is based on Boucicault's own play The Colleen Bawn. The opera received its premiere at Covent Garden Theatre, London on Monday 10 February 1862.-Background:The Lily of Killarney...

and Maritana

Maritana

Maritana is a grand opera in three acts composed by William Vincent Wallace, with a libretto by Edward Fitzball . The opera is based on the play Don César de Bazan by Adolphe d'Ennery and Philippe François Pinel Dumanoir , which was also the source material for Jules Massenet's opéra comique Don...

) featured in Old Vic and Sadler's Wells seasons. After the Second World War, the company began to programme operetta, including The Merry Widow (1958), Die Fledermaus

Die Fledermaus

Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...

(1958), Orpheus in the Underworld

Orpheus in the Underworld

Orphée aux enfers is an opéra bouffon , or opéra féerie in its revised version, by Jacques Offenbach. The French text was written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux....

(1960), Merrie England

Merrie England (opera)

Merrie England is an English comic opera in two acts by Edward German to a libretto by Basil Hood. The patriotic story concerns love and rivalries at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, who is portrayed as jealous of the affection of Sir Walter Raleigh for Bessie Throckmorton. Its sunny depiction of...

(1960), La vie parisienne

La vie parisienne

La vie parisienne is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, composed by Jacques Offenbach, with a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy.This work was Offenbach's first full-length piece to portray contemporary Parisian life, unlike his earlier period pieces and mythological subjects...

(1961), La belle Hélène

La belle Hélène

La belle Hélène , opéra bouffe in three acts, is an operetta by Jacques Offenbach to an original French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy...

(1963), and The Gipsy Baron

The Gypsy Baron

The Gypsy Baron is an operetta in three acts by Johann Strauss II which premiered at the Theater an der Wien on 24 October 1885. Its libretto was by the author Ignaz Schnitzer and in turn was based on Sáffi by Mór Jókai. During the composer's lifetime, the operetta enjoyed great success, second...

(1964).

The company has produced six of Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy opera

Savoy opera

The Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house...

s. After the successful Iolanthe and The Mikado in 1962 and Patience in 1969, the last much revived in the UK, the U.S. and on the continent, a second production of The Mikado in 1986 starred the comedian Eric Idle

Eric Idle

Eric Idle is an English comedian, actor, author, singer, writer, and comedic composer. He was as a member of the British comedy group Monty Python, a member of the The Rutles on Saturday Night Live and author of the play, Spamalot....

 in a black-and-white setting moved to a 1920s English seaside hotel. It has been regularly revived over 25 years. A 1992 production of Princess Ida

Princess Ida

Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen. Princess Ida opened at the Savoy Theatre on January 5, 1884, for a run of 246 performances...

directed by Ken Russell

Ken Russell

Henry Kenneth Alfred "Ken" Russell was an English film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style. He attracted criticism as being obsessed with sexuality and the church...

 was a critical and box office disaster, ran briefly, and was not revived. The Pirates of Penzance

The Pirates of Penzance

The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...

was produced in 2005. A highly-coloured production of The Gondoliers

The Gondoliers

The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances , closing on 30 June 1891...

opened in 2006; the press pointed out that the company's diction had declined to the point that the recently introduced surtitles were essential.

From the 1980s the company has experimented with Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 shows, including Pacific Overtures

Pacific Overtures

Pacific Overtures is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, a libretto by John Weidman, and additional material by Hugh Wheeler. The musical is set in 1853 Japan and follows the difficult Westernization of Japan, through the lives of two friends caught in the change...

(1987), Street Scene

Street Scene (opera)

Street Scene is a Broadway musical or, more precisely, an "American opera" by Kurt Weill , Langston Hughes , and Elmer Rice...

(1898), On the Town (2005), Kismet

Kismet (musical)

Kismet is a musical with lyrics and musical adaptation by Robert Wright and George Forrest, adapted from the music of Alexander Borodin, and a book by Charles Lederer and Luther Davis, based on Kismet, the 1911 play by Edward Knoblock...

(2007), and Candide

Candide (operetta)

Candide is an operetta with music composed by Leonard Bernstein, based on the novella of the same name by Voltaire. The operetta was first performed in 1956 with a libretto by Lillian Hellman; but since 1974 it has been generally performed with a book by Hugh Wheeler which is more faithful to...

(2008). In many of ENO's lighter shows, the size of the Coliseum has been a problem, both in putting across pieces written for much more intimate theatres and in selling enough tickets.

Recordings

Recordings of individual scenes and numbers were made by Sadler's Wells singers from the company's earliest days. In 1972 an LP set was issued bringing together many of these recordings, prefaced with a tribute to Lilian Baylis recorded in 1936. Among the singers in the set are Joan Cross

Joan Cross

Joan Cross was an English soprano, closely associated with the operas of Benjamin Britten. She also sang in the Italian and German operatic repertoires. She later became a musical administrator, taking on the direction of the Sadler's Wells Opera Company.-Career:Cross was born in London...

, Heddle Nash

Heddle Nash

William Heddle Nash was an English lyric tenor who appeared in opera and oratorio in the middle decades of the twentieth century. He also made numerous recordings that are still available on CD reissues....

, Edith Coates

Edith Coates

Edith Coates OBE was an English operatic mezzo-soprano. A highly gifted actress with a striking stage presence, Coates initially found success in larger dramatic roles before transitioning into portraying mainly character parts in the 1950s. She began her career with Lilian Baylis's opera company...

, Joan Hammond

Joan Hammond

Dame Joan Hilda Hood Hammond, DBE, CMG was an Australian operatic soprano, singing coach and champion golfer.- Early life :...

, Owen Brannigan

Owen Brannigan

Owen Brannigan OBE was an English bass, known in opera for buffo roles and in concert for a wide range of solo parts in music ranging from Henry Purcell to Michael Tippett...

, Peter Pears

Peter Pears

Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears CBE was an English tenor who was knighted in 1978. His career was closely associated with the composer Edward Benjamin Britten....

, Peter Glossop

Peter Glossop

Peter Glossop was an English baritone who was the only Englishman to have sung Verdi's great tragic baritone roles at La Scala, Milan...

 and Charles Craig

Charles Craig (tenor)

Charles James Craig was an English operatic tenor. He was known as one of "the most Italianate of English operatic tenors". From 1957 to 1980 he performed leading tenor roles at London's Royal Opera House and English National Opera...

. The conductors include Lawrance Collingwood

Lawrance Collingwood

Lawrance Arthur Collingwood CBE was an English conductor, composer and record producer.Lawrance Collingwood was born in London and became a choirboy at Westminster Abbey. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Exeter College, Oxford...

, Reginald Goodall

Reginald Goodall

Sir Reginald Goodall was an English conductor, noted for his performances of the operas of Richard Wagner and conducting the premieres of several operas by Benjamin Britten.-Biography:...

 and Michael Mudie.

After the Second World War, the Sadler's Wells company made a 78 r.p.m. set of excerpts from Simon Boccanegra (1949), but made no more recordings until the stereo LP era. In the 1950s and 1960s, the company recorded a series of abridged sets of operas and operettas for EMI

EMI Records

EMI Records is the flagship record label founded by the EMI company in 1972 and launched in January 1973 as the successor to its Columbia label. The EMI label was launched worldwide...

, each occupying two LP sides. All were sung in English. The opera sets were Madame Butterfly (1960), Il trovatore

Il trovatore

Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...

(1962), and Hansel and Gretel (1966). The abridged operetta recordings were Die Fledermaus

Die Fledermaus

Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...

(1959), The Merry Widow

The Merry Widow

The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...

(1959), The Land of Smiles

The Land of Smiles

The Land of Smiles is a romantic operetta in three acts by Franz Lehár. The German language libretto was by Ludwig Herzer and Fritz Löhner. The performance time is about 100 minutes....

(1960), La vie parisienne

La vie parisienne

La vie parisienne is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, composed by Jacques Offenbach, with a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy.This work was Offenbach's first full-length piece to portray contemporary Parisian life, unlike his earlier period pieces and mythological subjects...

(1961), Orpheus in the Underworld

Orpheus in the Underworld

Orphée aux enfers is an opéra bouffon , or opéra féerie in its revised version, by Jacques Offenbach. The French text was written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux....

(1960), Iolanthe

Iolanthe

Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh collaboration of the fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan....

(1962), La belle Hélène

La belle Hélène

La belle Hélène , opéra bouffe in three acts, is an operetta by Jacques Offenbach to an original French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy...

(1963) and The Gypsy Baron

The Gypsy Baron

The Gypsy Baron is an operetta in three acts by Johann Strauss II which premiered at the Theater an der Wien on 24 October 1885. Its libretto was by the author Ignaz Schnitzer and in turn was based on Sáffi by Mór Jókai. During the composer's lifetime, the operetta enjoyed great success, second...

(1965). A complete recording of The Mikado

The Mikado

The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...

was released in 1962.

Excerpts from the company's Twilight of the Gods

Götterdämmerung

is the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four operas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen...

were recorded in German under Mackerras (1972) and in English under Goodall (1973). The complete Ring

Der Ring des Nibelungen

Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...

cycle was recorded by EMI during public performances at the Coliseum between 1973 and 1977. The cycle has been reissued on CD by Chandos Records

Chandos Records

Chandos Records is an independent classical music recording company based in Colchester, Essex, in the United Kingdom, founded in 1979 by Brian Couzens.- Background :...

. A live recording of the company's The Mastersingers

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an opera in three acts, written and composed by Richard Wagner. It is among the longest operas still commonly performed today, usually taking around four and a half hours. It was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich, on June 21,...

was made in 1968 but not released until 2008.

In the CD era, a series of operatic recordings sung in English has been released by Chandos Records. Some are reissues are of Sadler's Wells Opera or ENO recordings originally issued by EMI: Mary Stuart

Maria Stuarda

Maria Stuarda is a tragic opera, , in two acts, by Gaetano Donizetti, to a libretto by Giuseppe Bardari, based on Friedrich Schiller's 1800 play Maria Stuart....

(recorded in 1982) and Julius Caesar

Giulio Cesare

Giulio Cesare in Egitto , commonly known simply as Giulio Cesare, is an Italian opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel in 1724...

(1985), both starring Janet Baker, and La traviata

La traviata

La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...

(1981), starring Valerie Masterson. The newer recordings, made specifically for the Chandos series, have no official connection with ENO, but feature many past and present members of the company. Conductors include Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Mark Elder and Paul Daniel. Those in which the chorus and orchestra of ENO appear are Lulu

Lulu (opera)

Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...

, The Makropoulos Affair, Werther

Werther

Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe....

, Dialogues of the Carmelites

Dialogues of the Carmelites

Dialogues of the Carmelites , is an opera in three acts by Francis Poulenc. In 1953, M. Valcarenghi approached Poulenc to commission a ballet for La Scala in Milan; when Poulenc found the proposed subject uninspiring, Valcarenghi suggested instead a screenplay by Georges Bernanos, based on the...

, The Barber of Seville

The Barber of Seville

The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...

, Rigoletto

Rigoletto

Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...

, Ernani

Ernani

Ernani is an operatic dramma lirico in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Hernani by Victor Hugo. The first production took place at La Fenice Theatre, Venice on 9 March 1844...

, Otello

Otello

Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....

and Falstaff

Falstaff (opera)

Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...

, as well as the live recordings of The Ring and The Mastersingers.

Education

In 1966, under the company's head of design, Margaret Harris

Margaret Harris

Margaret Frances Harris was an English theatre and opera costume and scenic designer.-Early years:Harris was born in Hayes, Kent, the fourth child and second daughter of William Birkbeck Harris, a Lloyds Insurance clerk, and his wife Kathleen Marion, née Carey...

, Sadler's Wells Theatre Design Course was founded; it later became Motley Theatre Design Course

Motley Theatre Design Course

Motley Theatre Design Course is a one-year independent theatre design course in London. It was founded at Sadler's Wells Opera in 1966.- Sadler's Wells Opera & English National Opera:...

. ENO Baylis, founded in 1985, is the education department of ENO; it aims to introduce new audiences to opera and "to deepen and enrich the experience of current audiences in an adventurous, creative and engaging manner." The programme offers training for students and young professionals, as well as workshops, commissions, talks and debates.

Musical directors

• Charles Corri
  Charles Corri
  Charles Corri was an English musician, conductor and arranger. He spent most of his career working for Lilian Baylis, as her musical director at the Old Vic Theatre, and then at Sadler's Wells Opera.-Life and career:...
  
   (1898–1935)
• Lawrance Collingwood
  Lawrance Collingwood
  Lawrance Arthur Collingwood CBE was an English conductor, composer and record producer.Lawrance Collingwood was born in London and became a choirboy at Westminster Abbey. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Exeter College, Oxford...
  
   (chief conductor, 1931–41, musical director 1941–46)
• James Robertson
  James Robertson (conductor)
  James Robertson CBE was an English conductor, best known as musical director of Sadler's Wells Opera.Robertson was born in Liverpool and was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge, before studying music at the Leipzig Conservatory and the Royal College of Music in London...
  
   (1946–54)
• Alexander Gibson
  Alexander Gibson (conductor)
  Sir Alexander Gibson, CBE was a Scottish conductor and opera intendant.Gibson was born in Motherwell and studied music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, as well as in London, Salzburg and Siena, Italy...
  
   (1957–59)
• Colin Davis
  Colin Davis
  Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett....
  
   (1961–65)
• Mario Bernardi
  Mario Bernardi
  Mario Bernardi, is a Canadian conductor and pianist. He has conducted 75 different operas and over 450 other works with the National Arts Centre Orchestra.-Early years:...
  
   (1966–68) and Bryan Balkwill
  Bryan Balkwill
  Bryan Havell Balkwill was an English orchestral conductor.Balkwill was born in London. He started to learn to play the piano at the age of four and was educated at Merchant Taylors' School. From there he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music...
  
   (1966–69), joint musical directors
• Charles Mackerras
  Charles Mackerras
  Sir Alan Charles Maclaurin Mackerras, AC, CH, CBE was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan...
  
   (1970–77)
• Sir Charles Groves
  Charles Groves
  Sir Charles Barnard Groves CBE was an English conductor. He was known for the breadth of his repertoire and for encouraging contemporary composers and young conductors....
  
   (1978–79)
• Mark Elder
  Mark Elder
  Sir Mark Philip Elder, CBE is a British conductor. He is the music director of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, England.-Biography:Elder was born in Hexham, Northumberland, England, the son of a dentist...
  
   (1979–93) (title changed to "music director" in 1979 and thereafter)
• Sian Edwards
  Sian Edwards
  Sian Edwards is an English conductor, best known as music director of English National Opera in the 1990s.Edwards was born in West Chiltington, West Sussex. She studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and later with the conductors Sir Charles Groves, Ilya Musin and Neeme Järvi...
  
   (1993–95)
• Paul Daniel
  Paul Daniel
  Paul Daniel CBE is an English conductor. He is particularly noted for performances and recordings of opera and of British music....
  
   (1997–2005)
• Edward Gardner
  Edward Gardner (conductor)
  Edward Gardner is a British conductor.Gardner sang as a chorister at Gloucester Cathedral. As a youth, he played piano, clarinet and organ. He attended the King's School, Gloucester and Eton College. At the University of Cambridge, he continued as a music student, and was a choral scholar in...
  
  (2007–)

External links

• ENO website
• ENO history