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.
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