ENO ticket prices slashed ahead of new season

 
New music director: Mark Wigglesworth

English National Opera is slashing the price of half of all its tickets for the first season under new music director Mark Wigglesworth.

It will offer 60,000 seats for £20 or under, with 100 seats at every performance available at the lowest price of £12.

The programme includes Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, designed by the artist Anish Kapoor and starring Stuart Skelton, and a new production of Puccini’s La bohème from Benedict Andrews, who directed Gillian Anderson in A Streetcar Named Desire.

The move comes as the beleaguered company fights back from a major cut in Arts Council funding as well as the surprise departure of its last chairman, Martyn Rose, and the planned exit of music director Edward Gardner.

Cressida Pollock, interim chief executive, said: “It is vital to ENO’s mission that our world-class programme is accessible to the widest possible audience.

“There should be no barrier — financial or cultural — to deter people from attending an ENO performance at the London Coliseum.”

Wigglesworth will conduct two of the six new productions, opening with Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The other will be Verdi’s The Force of Destiny, directed by Catalan Calixto Bieito, whose previous interpretations of Verdi included a row of men on toilet seats in A Masked Ball.

The 2015/16 season also includes Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, about the Egyptian pharoah, which will be the first new production in London since ENO presented the UK premiere in 1985, and the first production of Bellini’s Norma at the Coliseum.

There will be five revivals of favourites including Anthony Minghella’s Madam Butterfly and Jonathan Miller’s The Mikado.

Wigglesworth said: “The philosophy of this exceptional company is very close to my heart … it is rightly proud of its past and I am immensely excited to be part of its future.”

After several years building audiences at venues including the Young Vic and Barbican, there are no performances outside the home base of the Coliseum this year.

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