Behind the scenes at the Coliseum

I do wish English National Opera would remember what it’s called and, mindful of its status as the only English-language opera company we have, translate opera titles into English as well as singing them in that language. There was no reason for Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin not to be given as Love from afar, nor for Donizetti’s Lucia to be ‘of’ rather than ‘di’ Lammermoor. Ligeti’s Le grand macabre is, admittedly, harder to render and may perhaps be allowed as an honourable exception, along with the untranslatable Così fan tutte. Rehearsals for the Ligeti opera, which opens the new season at ENO on 17 September, are currently being conducted in a mixture of Catalan and English, under the auspices of the Fura dels Baus company, known for its wild and wonderful theatrical events, often on a massive scale.

In the case of Le grand macabre, this sort of scale is manifest in a gigantic figure of a crouching woman, known as Claudia, upon, through, over and around which the performers will clamber, crawl, slide and swing. She also represents a considerable challenge for the technical team at the London Coliseum, headed by Geoff Summerton. ENO is a repertory company, performing one opera one night, and another the next, so a dauntingly complex schedule has to be constructed to make that possible. I met up with him on the Coliseum stage, during the ostensibly ‘quiet’ period of August. The cavernous space is almost empty, although the visiting Legend of Kung Fu company has left a few props in one corner, including a heap of rubble — remnants of the concrete blocks smashed by the athletes in their bravura finale. ‘It’s difficult to get rid of,’ says Summerton. ‘We’ll probably have to put it all in a skip at the end of the week when we start our annual maintenance programme.’