ENO gets it right

As I sat contentedly watching the latest, and supposedly last, revival of Nicholas Hytner’s production of The Magic Flute last week at the Coliseum, I wondered why, when something is as serviceable and as flexible as that, it need ever be retired and replaced by another — which, to judge from recent experiences, especially ones at ENO, is almost certain to be vastly inferior to what it’s replacing. Only two evenings before I had suffered rage and contempt sitting in the same seat and watching the new Carmen, which will no doubt be dubbed ‘controversial’ by the management, on the basis of one idiotically favourable review. Since the regime at ENO, as at many opera houses, thinks it is clever to hire a producer who is proudly ignorant of opera, who knows what horrors may await us when Flute gets its new outing? Despite its greatness, it is a vulnerable work, which can seem to lurch between vulgarity and pretentiousness.