Sir, One of the 194 organisations threatened with the withdrawal of its grant by Arts Council England is the Early Music Network. British musicians have long led the world in the historically informed performance of Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music, and the EMN has been a vital advocate and facilitator in this field since 1977. If it is now abandoned, more than 100 concerts around the country each year would not happen. Nor would a biennial showcase providing a platform for innovative and emerging ensembles, and a competition for young performers. The network has helped to develop the careers of most of Britain’s top early music performers, has helped to lever up to ten times its own Arts Council grant from other funders, and has acted as a model for similar structures in other European countries — all at an annual cost to the taxpayer that is less than the salary of one GP. Arts Council England would be wilfully negligent not to reconsider this.

James Bowman
Harry Christophers
Sir John Eliot Gardiner
Christopher Hogwood
Sir Roger Norrington
Anthony Rooley

Sir, As a professional opera singer, I would like to echo Richard Morrison’s call for the Arts Council to reverse its decision to remove funding for Birmingham Opera Company (Jan 19).

It have worked on two projects for that dynamic company and I therefore speak from first-hand experience of the importance of the work that it does, not just as Birmingham’s only resident opera company, but for the operatic and artistic community as a whole.

There is no other opera company in the UK today that works as hard to win new audiences for opera, and to demystify an art form that is still, I’m afraid, all too often perceived as elitist. Involvement and accessibility are core values of the company, and, accordingly, its success should be measured, not by the amount of independent funding it has managed to attract, but, rather, by the great diversity of the audiences and volunteer performers it manages to attract.

This is truly cutting-edge opera, elemental and forceful in its persistence in forcing us to re-examine the definition of opera in the 21st century. If our Government is really interested in leaving a legacy for future generations, it should focus more on companies like Birmingham Opera Company, and less on gold medals.

Iain Paterson
Godalming, Surrey

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