To those of you who read Private Eye you may have noticed a small article in the current issue (1223) about the proprsed plans for the Royal Opera House to establish a northern base at the Palace Theatre in Manchester which, it is also proposed, will benefit from a £100 million refurbishment.

Now I don’t want to regurgiate my own thoughts about these plans as I have already made these clear in two previous postings here and here.  Private Eye, in it’s usual no holds barred style has branded the whole idea “damaging, silly and waste of everybody’s time”.  Damaging to the Lowry, Opera North and, interestingly, Welsh National Opera whose regular North West performances take place at the Liverpool Empire rather than in Manchester.

Private eye makes the claim that the reason this idea has been revisited is due to Manchesters loss over the super-casino fiasco.  In other words, the governments owes Manchester!  It’s also interesting to note, again as pointed out by Private Eye, that culture secretary Andy Burnham represents a Manchester consituency.

Private Eye goes on to suggest that the “fiercly ambitious” operation of the Manchester International Festival may have been instrumental in reigniting the flame for idea of the Royal Opera House in Manchester in order for the festival to truly compete with other major international arts festivals such as Edinburgh and Salzburg.  However, I am not convinced of the validity of this claim due to the well publicised presence of Opera North at next summers festival who will be performing a world premiere opera by Rufus Wainwright in the very theatre caught up in these talks, the Palace Theatre.

I agree with Private Eye that Manchester audiences are not lacking in opera.  Opera North continue to tour a varied programme into the Lowry and Ellen Kent appears in every Palace Theatre and Opera House season brochure with her touring productions.  I also agree that these plans coming to frution will leave huge questions about the future of the Lowry which opened in 2000 at a cost of £116 million.

Private Eye lastly makes a very good point that “as we slide into a recession, no one’s going to find that £100 million” required for the Palace Theatre’s refurbishment which is probably true.  However, stranger things have happened.

The saga continues.

-Malcolm Wallace

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 7:59 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.