I agree with Darren Henley that to survive a funding slash, opera should become more accessible to more people (Arts Council chief: to survive funding slash, opera should move to car parks and pubs, 14 November). While there is still a place for world-class grand spectacle, opera’s essence and enjoyment can be conveyed with smaller-scale presentations and different ways of presenting them, including on screen.
The dominance of London-based productions excludes them from most of those who do not live in London and for whom an opera ticket at high prices is accompanied by costs of travel, and frequently also accommodation and time away from work.
As a requirement for receiving Arts Council funding from the taxpayer, every organisation should be obliged to make at least one performance from each production available for live streaming for TV. During lockdown, when live audiences were not available, venues did this to maintain income, and acquired the technology and expertise needed. Making access to live art more democratic and opening up an extra income stream at the same time seems a possible way forward.
Dr Clive Richards
Bristol
• If you can build a 750-seat opera house for £10m just off the M25, as has recently been done successfully, which has “immediate, lively acoustic” according to music critic Fiona Maddocks, why would you bother putting on opera in a car park, where the acoustics would be totally inappropriate? How would that create, in Darren Henley’s words, “rousing choruses and breathtaking arias”(We don’t want to bring down the curtain on ENO, but opera has to change, 14 November)?
Raf Orlowski
Cambridge
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