Intermezzo

The end of Gardner's world

Logic dictates that the next person to depart the ENO should be John Berry, but no, it was Ed Gardner whose escape was announced today. He leaves his role as Music Director at the end of the 2014/15 season  "to take up his new appointment as Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and focus on his symphonic repertoire".

His replacement is Mark Wigglesworth, who will be 51 by the time he grabs the ENO baton in September 2015. Although the intelligent and diligent Wigglesworth is not short of gigs, he has held only two music director positions in his long career. A rocky four years as principal conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales preceded a prematurely-curtailed tenure at La Monnaie, where "Wigglesworth faced mutiny from his musicians and drew negative reviews from Belgian critics. In informal motions of no confidence, the orchestra voted against Wigglesworth with a majority of more than 90 percent."

Wigglesworth has conducted just two ENO productions in the last 10 years - Katya Kabanova (2010) and Parsifal (2011) - but presumably the ENO board feel that's enough to base a decision on. And it's not as if there are dozens of qualified candidates out there willing to take on ENO's artistic and funding issues. We shall see.

ENO's big secret

It's the secret the ENO press office (names omitted to protect the guilty) didn't want you to know until July.

But I'm daring to non-exclusively reveal that Ed Gardner has today been awarded a well-deserved OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.

ENO's Flying Dutchman - a leap too far

The Flying Dutchman - English National Opera, 28 April 2012 (first night)

It seems Jonathan Kent has been watching a few classic German opera DVDs.  His new The Flying Dutchman (yes, it's sung in English) for ENO bravely departs from straightforward story telling -but only to recycle some of the weariest cliches in Wagner Oper. Slick West End-worthy production values and a few satisfying musical aspects do not entirely compensate.

Simon Boccanegra -Tcherniakov tries ENO

Simon Boccanegra - ENO Coliseum, 8 June 2011

Dmitri Tcherniakov’s reputation for radical and thought-provoking productions is solidified by his new Simon Boccanegra for ENO. Unfortunately his ideas are so drably clothed and opaquely executed that the experience is a testing one.

Gilliam uber alles

The Damnation of Faust - ENO, 6 May 2011

 

What lures men to evil?

Linking the rise of the Nazis to the Faust tale isn't new - Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus got there a long time ago. But Terry Gilliam's exploration of the seductive power of the dark side is so assured and so brilliantly integrated with Berlioz's music that it's hard to believe this is the first time he's directed an opera - not to mention that he claims to be no great opera fan anyway.

Amanda Echalaz is ***SUPER TOSCA***

Tosca - English National Opera, 18 May 2010 (first night)

I haven’t always been Ed Gardner’s biggest fan in the past, and to be perfectly honest, I'm not Puccini's either, but his breathtakingly superb conducting has got to be the main reason to catch this new Tosca. 'Revelatory' is a word that's often tossed lazily around, but here it's perfectly justified. This is a Tosca I could listen to over and over again.

more and *photos* on next page