MY VERSION OF EVENTS....

When we started Opera Holland Park in 1996, one of our primary aims (and in this we were not alone) was to feature the concept of "accessibility" at the heart of the company. In so many respects this concept becomes ever harder to maintain because, well, things don't get cheaper to provide and audiences are ever more demanding. And when a major newspaper reviews a show, the critic doesn't instinctively consider the cost of our tickets. It is further complicated by the great differences in opinion vis a vis what "accessibility" actually means. In our case, we have fallen back on the fact that we provide 1500 free tickets and a few thousand at £15 and nobody in their right mind would argue against the idea that these seats are very appealing. But after that, you pay £50 and more which in comparative terms is reasonable but in real terms is still pricey. Factor in the economic situation and our core audiences (who are not all wealthy) have to start mak...

It took us a while, but we finally announced the 2015 Investec Opera Holland Park season back in September. We were still dismantling the theatre from the last one and it is now a rush, believe it or not, to be ready for the summer. The autumn is filled with drawing up strategies, doing the budgets and yes, getting the money; lots of generous collars get felt. The 2015 line-up is a corker for sure. Il trittico represents the big challenge (I bet you thought it would be Aida huh?) because of the difficulties in sustaining a three hour evening featuring three very different pieces. Having Anne Sophie Duprels in two of them will help and knowing our 2012 Schicchi is a lovely production does too. As much as I love GS, I am thrilled by the prospect of Il tabarro and Suor Angelica, the latter opera's final half being profoundly moving. There is no question that Aida is something of a mountain for any opera company to climb but Verdi did give us some intimacy to work with too and...

A (very slightly) edited version of the talk I gave at the recent - and very interesting - OBERTO conference at Oxford Brookes University. The day was full of far more interesting and scholarly papers than mine; I was just the end-of-the-day entertainment! Reassessing audiences and the "not for us debate" I tend to approach opera from an instinctive point of view. Instinct is really something people like me have almost always  survived on. I read a piece recently in which Kasper Holten, asked whether he was making the right decisions on repertoire, said that in the end, we can really only act on our instinct and our taste. After all, whilst scientific approaches to marketing and running our businesses has a place, if that was the only answer we would all surely be millionaires. So, often, instinct is our greatest tool. And after 25 years of doing this and meeting thousands of opera goers, instinct and experience is something I need to pay attention to. Right now, my instinct ...

Throughout this summer, there have been many debates and flare-ups in the press and on social media surrounding opera. The controversies and resulting soul-searching and argument fluctuated wildly between those who felt a sense of doom and gloom and those eager to be optimistic - sometimes, in my view, with a touch of delusion - about the future and what was good about the developments occurring in the industry. It was interesting, then, to attend the OBERTO conference at Oxford Brookes University yesterday, where an impressive collection of academics and opera professionals delivered papers on a variety of issues and subjects based around the issue of accessibility, access and the age old matter of opera's reputation. You can be sure that the word "elitism" came up quite a bit. Throughout the day, the well constructed programme tried to encapsulate and rationalise the varying pillars of the operatic firmament that occupy all of us ceaselessly. These included crossove...

Having posted a piece that was kind to critics and thus risking opprobrium from all quarters, I suppose I ought to be wary of writing a piece that is sympathetic to the current opera demon, Peter Gelb.  Let us be clear, I don't know what the detailed financial situation at the Met is, I don't know how its budgets are split and allocated, I don't know how much they spend on sets and productions. I just read selective figures used negatively and that is always something we should be wary of.  What Gelb and the Met are going through is probably entirely unique in the opera world given the scale of economics involved and the accusations of mismanagement that are being thrown around are hard to reconcile with some of the realities; it is certainly true, for example, that Gelb has taken the Met's turnover from $222 million to over $300 million in eight years which doesn't immediately suggest mismanagement, but that is as glib and superficial an analysis as anything else I...

Some of you may wish to look away now; I may say nice things about critics. It may not have escaped your attention that I was at Oxford University this week to see my daughter graduate: anybody who has read of my school experiences will know quite how far she has fallen from the tree in achieving what she has. I am obviously as proud as punch. The ceremony - in Latin - was in a place that had me thinking a bit more about the role of the theatre in our lives. The Sheldonian is a magnificent 17th century building, designed by Sir Christopher Wren and has been the venue for the university's graduation ceremonies for nearly four centuries; the history is soaked into the walls. What kept going through my mind as I sat in that place, where tens of thousands of young people have emerged from years of learning (apart from quite how dreadfully I treated my own education) is how everything we are as a nation, as a species even, is related to the arts, culture and learning. And then fo...

I have been doing a lot of moaning recently (I hear you groan). The world of opera has been busily peeing on its own shoes for the past few months and I have found cause to groan variously about social media, sexing up and the objectification of singers, booing, the obsession with digital, body-shaming and whether or not the art form is a class-based private members club.  We spend too much time talking about opera and not just "doing" opera. We seem to be the pariah art form, frightening to, and caricatured by, the narrow-minded, ill-informed media to which our response is often to become strident, cocksure and full of braggadocio, but we still anxiously check ourselves in the mirror, only to dissolve into self-doubt again. Frankly, we are all over the place,  focused on new audiences but not necessarily concerning ourselves with the audience we already have. The latter is occupying me more right now; the changing behaviour and conservatism of existing opera audiences in the...