Spectator letters: The ENO must go on; another expensive typo; and PC and Pamela

A vandalistic proposal

Sir: Igor Toronyi-Lalic (Farewell, ENO, 7 February) displays a lack of judgment in advocating ENO’s demise and in suggesting that opera needs no opera houses, companies or subsidy. That its new arts editor should plead for the closure of England’s great repertory opera company is unworthy of The Spectator.

Toronyi-Lalic is wrong to think that the hundreds of thousands of English opera-goers will be content with performances by itinerant ensembles only. Small-scale performances presented anywhere can be moving, but the public demand productions of a scale that befits the art form as it has grown over the last four centuries. An orchestrated ‘farewell’ to ENO would be an act of cultural vandalism on a company that is admired throughout the world and which (contrary to what Toronyi-Lalic says) gave the world premiere of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, which it commissioned.

John Berry’s era has kept ENO at the cutting edge of interpretations of the classics and the new. There have been a few failures, as risk demands, but such risk must be supported. It is the successes that are in the majority, leading ENO productions to be seen in 42 countries and in operatic centres from New York to Munich.

As the former general director of the Opera Theatre of St Louis and the Santa Fe Opera, I fought battles for this art form for decades. The ENO was always a model for us, and it remains an inspiring example of what an opera company should be.
Richard Gaddes
New York

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Sir: I was interested by Peter Robins’s article about the world’s most expensive typing errors (‘Dangerous characters’, 7 February). Here is one reported in the New York Review of Books (27 May 1993):

Unfortunately, Abrams didn’t know how to set up a secret account in which to deposit the expected $10 million from Brunei [to fund the Contras].