MORE than 100 staff, including singers and instrumentalists, will lose their jobs at English National Opera under plans submitted to the Arts Council, forcing the company to rely on freelance musicians for all but the smallest productions.

It is the latest shock in a series of events that has seen the company lose its artistic director, plunge £1.2 million into debt and be bailed out by the Arts Council twice in six years.

The company is described by its music director as in a “serious sense of siege” and David Pountney, the former ENO director of productions, has described Martin Smith, the new chairman, as “an amateur and a bully”.

ENO, which has been without a general director for six months since the resignation of Nicholas Payne, is now under pressure to appoint his replacement to lead the company during an overhaul. It has struggled to find a successor since Mr Payne quit after being stripped of financial responsibility by Mr Smith. It is feared that no experienced opera chief would want to take on the company.

But The Times has learnt that Sean Doran, a festival organiser with no experience of running an opera company, is a front-runner for the job. Last night Mr Doran, an Irishman who has been praised for his stewardship of the Perth International Arts Festival in Australia, confirmed that he was on the shortlist. He declined to comment on the likelihood of his being appointed but said that the current Perth festival would be his last. He has organised festivals for more than ten years, including the Belfast Festival and the UK Year of Literature and Writing in Swansea.

The Arts Council agreed to bail out ENO this week on the condition that all parts of the company would be reviewed. A plan from Caroline Felton, a management consultant who oversaw the “stabilisation” of Welsh National Opera, is seen as the last chance to make ENO economically viable.

An Arts Council spokesman said that the plan neither offered nor denied hope to ENO staff. Last year the staff were assured that their jobs would be secure during the refurbishment of ENO’s home, the London Coliseum, which involves the theatre’s closure from June till next January, and performances at the Barbican.

Under the proposal, the chorus would be cut by a third to 40 members, the orchestra by some 20 musicians, and production and administrative staff by 70. Big productions would rely on freelancers.

The chorus had lost eight singers last year as part of an agreement to cut its budget by £97,000. Mr Payne reassured members that the number would be restored when the ENO returned to the Coliseum after its stay at the Barbican.

Singers and musicians, who had been told not to talk about the plan, said that quality would be undermined. One musician said the savings from sacking a quarter of the orchestra would have little impact as less than 10 per cent of ENO’s 2003 budget would be spent on them. “It would be disastrous,” he said. “When you have a series of shows, freelance musicians won’t tie themselves up for the whole run.”

A member of the chorus said that audiences would notice a decline in quality with part-time musicians. He said: “The advantage of a permanent chorus is that you become very intimate, and can react vocally and physically on stage. If you have temporary players there for four to six weeks, that will dissipate.” The chorus would also be prone to error because of the additional work that those remaining would have to take on, he said.

On Tuesday the chorus protested outside the Arts Council building, singing the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Verdi’s Nabucco. Gerry Robinson, the Arts Council’s chairman, said it was “the most beautiful protest I have ever heard”.

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