SINGERS in the chorus at the English National Opera (ENO) are balloting on industrial action in the face of management threats to axe four out of 44 jobs and cut basic pay by 25 per cent to less than £25,000 a year.

Cuts to overtime and other payments mean that earnings could fall by nearly 40 per cent.

It is happening at the same time as industrial action by junior doctors, so you might ask: “Why should I care? Junior doctors are crucial to me, but I never go to the opera. It’s for toffs isn’t it? And tickets cost hundreds of pounds.”

It is true that opera in Britain has not reached the mass appeal it has in places such as Italy, but at £12 a ticket the cheapest seats at the ENO cost about the same as going to a movie, and what is unique about the ENO is that every opera is sung in English. In 1932, when it was set up, it was called the “people’s opera.”

And Equity, the union which organises the singers, believes that every job must be defended, every pay cut must be resisted and the “people’s opera” must be saved.

If you have followed the story you will already know that ENO has been troubled for some time.

The critics love the operas, and the chorus in particular gets praised, but management has been hammered by the press for failing to run the company effectively.

Last year management hit rock bottom. After a period of infighting, ENO chairman Martyn Rose and executive director Henriette Gotz resigned within days of each other, followed a few weeks later by artistic director John Berry.

This came in the wake of an Arts Council funding cut of £5 million a year — ENO was placed in “special measures” with a warning to improve its “business model” or face more cuts.

Clearly the Arts Council had run out of patience, but its savage cut — 29 per cent of total funding — has pushed the company further down its spiral of decline.

The chorus, whose collective singing does so much to bring power and drama to ENO’s productions, has no responsibility for this mess.

Yet even though they continue to give 100 per cent at every performance, ENO bosses appear to believe they should pay the price for management’s failures.

Equity’s campaign against job and pay cuts was launched at a press conference on February 8 and the ballot for industrial action started on February 15.

The chorus has had great support from the media, perhaps because when they sang Hail Poetry from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado at the press conference the journalists were almost literally blown away. Words on a page cannot begin to convey how powerful and moving this chorus is when in full voice.

Since then every performance at the London Coliseum, the ENO’s home, has been leafleted by chorus members and union activists and the audience is backing their chorus by sending postcards to ENO chair Harry Brunjes calling on him to negotiate with Equity to keep a full-time chorus on full pay.

There has been a groundswell of public support. Humphrey Burton, former head of music at BBC TV, wrote to the Times: “I don’t think it’s going too far to argue that it would be cultural vandalism to sacrifice ENO’s splendid chorus on the altar of economy,” and opera grandees Dame Janet Baker, Graham Clark, Dame Anne Evans, Sir David McVicar, Sir Antonio Pappano and Sir John Tomlinson wrote, also in the Times, that “plans to reduce its chorus members’ contracts and limit its productions to eight a season threaten to destroy ENO.”

A Guardian editorial drew a parallel with the junior doctors. Under the headline “Chorus of disapproval” the Guardian said: “Opera houses rely on singers the way hospitals rely on doctors. Managements are putting core purposes at risk.” 

Surely it is obvious to everyone — with the possible exception of ENO management — that an opera is nothing without its chorus.

Fellow singers are offering their solidarity. The chorus at the Royal Opera House wrote an open letter to Brunjes which called for a halt to job and pay cuts and appealed to him to “make your company once again the greatest in the world for opera performed in English,” and from across the Atlantic David Frye of the Chorus Committee at New York’s Metropolitan Opera sent a message of support.

But perhaps the last word should be with Simon McBurney, who you may know as Archdeacon Robert in BBC 2’s sitcom Rev but who right now is directing the chorus in Mozart’s Magic Flute. He tweeted: “ENO Chorus work very hard for modest pay. Now being told to take 25% pay cut. Stupid, brutal and plain wrong.”

• Martin Brown is assistant general secretary of communications and membership support at Equity.

- Morning Star readers can support the ENO chorus by signing the petition at www.equity.org.uk/ENO.