Dear friends and family of English Touring Opera,

Oh gosh, how sad I am that we cannot share with most of you first-hand the beautiful work that we have made over the last weeks and months. For a second time we have had to cancel something that was just starting to live in your eyes and ears. I think that this work was very special – serious, strong, and focussed principally on wartime lives, when people managed to make beautiful, clear-sighted things in times of real crisis, ennobling and exalting all who sang and heard.

We are going to try to give you a flavour of it – some of our friends have filmed themselves reading a poem or three that they chose from the song cycles in our season, and we will continue to send you those. We hope that some of what we made will be filmed just before the lockdown, and that you will be able to see that soon. We are holding on to these precious ‘solitude’ shows, and I hope that we will be able to perform them live in seasons to come.

In the meantime we will do as much as we can to look after our artists, and to set them working at what they do so generously and so well whenever we can. As soon as a window opens, we will be making more opera for you: that’s a pledge. We won’t blather too much about it, but we will get on and do it. It’s important.

Take great care. Listen to these songs and these poems. Tell us what you think about what you want opera to do for you when this time passes. Spread the word.

Thank you.

James Conway
Director, English Touring Opera