English National Opera appears to have turned a corner by boosting its ticket sales to £11.4 million, partly thanks to sell-out performances starring Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson.
Although the company has historically been devoted to opera, it decided to produce one musical a year after Arts Council England announced a subsidy cut of £5 million in 2014. The company, which issued its annual report for 2015-16 yesterday, received £12.4 million of public funds last year as well as a one-off grant to cover restructuring costs.
It increased its overall income to £40.3 million and generated a surplus of £308,000 despite the company’s reduced subsidy.
Terfel and Thompson starred in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street between March 30 and April 12 last year. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard was staged this year, starring Glenn Close, and next year Alfie Boe and Katherine Jenkins will appear in a new version of Carousel.
Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell musical will show at the Coliseum in the summer as part of plans to raise revenue for the company by renting out its stage.
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However, sponsorship and donations have fallen sharply since 2013, when the company raised £6.1 million. It raised £2.7 million in 2015-16.
A company spokeswoman said the ENO was “working towards increasing fundraising by £1 million a year by 2020, and was currently on track”. She would not disclose which sponsors had withdrawn, but a comparison of supporters lists suggests that corporate sponsorship may have declined. The number of people in the categories for the most generous individual donors has also shrunk. Deirdre and Thomas Lynch, an Irish couple who were previously listed as supporters of “ENO Create” alongside other generous philanthropists, are no longer present in that category.
Cressida Pollock, the company’s chief executive, rejected rumours that the ENO might relocate after increasing the amount of time that it rents out its premises for other productions.
She said: “We would like to make it clear that we have no intention of leaving the Coliseum. It is our home.
“Far from reducing the quality and quantity of our work, in three years’ time [the] ENO will be producing more opera than it currently does, as well as supporting both our audiences and our artists in a range of other ways.”