DAVID MELLOR

Last week the Arts Council declared war on opera. English National Opera has lost all its money, subject to a three-year transitional grant to allow it to establish itself outside London. All the same people who have been failing at ENO for years remain in place. That absurd popinjay Harry Brunjes will still be chair. So the chances of a happy outcome are slim or none. And Slim’s left town.

I’m especially sad about this because I remember ENO in its glory years, when a Ring Cycle in the 1970s attracted audiences from all over Europe.

The Arts Council wouldn’t have dared lay a finger on

ENO then. But now, such is the indifferent work it produces in what is essentially a part-time operation – only four operas between April and the end of this year – that Arts Council people, who have long harboured a resentment against opera as being elitist, obviously feel they can get away with it. And they probably will.

I feel sore about it, because when Chief Secretary I persuaded John Major to allow me to buy the Coliseum for ENO at the behest of the late, great Lord Harewood.

Some years ago I went to see a top apparatchik at the

Arts Council to complain about how hopeless ENO had become. With a flourish, he pulled from a file a self-serving and glittering account of ENO’s activities, prepared by

ENO itself, of course.

That was his answer. Not convincing but good enough to get them to the point where their real agenda could be revealed.

The people I feel really sorry for are the members of ENO’s excellent orchestra, and of their outstanding chorus, plus all the other technical people who have become a centre of excellence for the whole operatic world in the UK.

They deserve better than to be thrown on the scrapheap. The presiding genius here is the Arts Council chairman, 76-yearold Sir Nicholas Serota, well over the hill, and anyway, never a performing arts man. I’m surprised nevertheless that he is prepared to put his name to these changes that are so destructive of an art form that appeals to people way outside the privileged classes.

It’s actually not London that will suffer most. Glyndebourne has lost 50 per cent of its grant, which is the money it uses to tour the provinces. Welsh National Opera has lost 35 per cent of its grant, which will hit its ability to tour in England.

This is just an ingrained and prejudiced hostility to an art form infinitely more worthwhile than some of those who are now going to get Arts Council cash.

And this may not be the end of it. Covent Garden has lost ten per cent of its grant, actually, on close analysis, quite a big hit. But the Arts Council has reserved the right to come back for more.

Covent Garden has become notorious for turning its back on British talent, so that even minor roles are often allocated to singers from overseas. And its intern programme rarely features young Brits.

So there isn’t much of a defence to the charge that Covent Garden is not a particularly British institution, so why should it get more than £20 million of taxpayers’ money? Those who run Covent Garden need to wise up.

POPINJAY: ENO chairman Harry Brunjes and Elaine Paige