After all the bloodletting and trendy initiatives of recent months, it is a relief to find that English National Opera is still capable of getting some things right. Eugene Onegin jolted London's second opera company to an end-of-season high. The production may be 11 years old, and its focus broadly traditional, but it reminded us better than anything of the vital purpose ENO serves.
Everything about this Onegin was understandable, both linguistically and emotionally. It was cast with care and there was a keen sense of ensemble. A packed audience at the Coliseum, many newcomers who had paid just £10, was on tenterhooks as Onegin flung himself at Tatiana's feet in the final scene in a desperate attempt to win the heart he had rebuffed. Tchaikovsky's opera was revealed as the masterpiece it is and ENO rediscovered in itself a communal inspiration.
All opera companies have their ups and downs, but for ENO the past two years - ever since the forced departure of Nicholas Payne as general director - have been an unusually long "down". The company has been riven by division. It lost focus: most of its headline events were peripheral to its core activity. Its expensively renovated home seemed unsuited to the activities the new management wanted to develop. Whether it was Wagner at Glastonbury or cross-disciplinary "contemporary arts", it was all about political grandstanding - the sign of a company that had lost confidence.
The tide finally seems to be turning. The departure of music director Paul Daniel removes the last rallying point for opposition to Sean Doran, Payne's inexperienced successor. Daniel ended his ENO association in a way that did him no credit: he publicly criticised his colleagues. He might have got away with it if his performances had set everyone on fire. But they didn't. It became hard to see what he stood for. His criticisms sounded like sour grapes.
Next season's programme - the first with Doran's imprint - looks good. All the "contemporary arts" nonsense has disappeared. There is a world premiere in September (Gerald Barry's Fassbinder opera), the return of John Tomlinson, Felicity Lott and other world-class artists, and the arrival of Oleg Caetani, Daniel's successor. With his huge experience and dynamic temperament, Caetani promises the sort of leadership that the company desperately needs.
Whether the arrival of surtitles will make a difference is neither here nor there. Singers' diction is not what it was and new media have taught audiences to want to hear every word. But titles dull the ear: while your mind is reading, it's not fully responding to sound. English titles for English-language performances are but a short step from English titles for original-language performances, which would subvert ENO's principles. What really counts is that ENO should capture the public's imagination, and for that language is not a prime consideration.
In Eugene Onegin some singers' diction was better than others, but the whole point of opera is that the music tells you everything the words don't convey. In its ecstasies of longing and agonies of remorse, ENO's Onegin was enough to make anyone succumb to opera again and again.
