I’m walking down Hackney’s Mare Street on what feels like the first day of spring, albeit in February. There’s a tangible sense of hope in the air and I’m on my way to meet Robin Norton-Hale, the general director of English Touring Opera since July 2022. We sit down in a window seat; she’s on her lunch break from tech rehearsals for Manon Lescaut which, she tells me, is going smoothly under Jude Christian’s masterful directorship.

Norton-Hale is an accomplished creative of many talents, making waves in her directing and writing ventures, and yet she also emits a quiet pride and confidence in her abilities to facilitate a collaborative creative process with her chosen team. ‘It seems so obvious that it’s almost not worth stating, but my one set of experiences and ideas are not going to be as good as collaborating. Of course you do need someone steering the ship, but people almost always know what they want to happen and what needs to happen.’

From an outsider’s perspective, Norton-Hale’s endeavours appear to be infused with tones of female empowerment: Jude Christian directs a fiery new interpretation of Manon Lescaut’s struggles with her place as a woman in society; artistic director Polly Graham leads the ETO’s production of The Rake’s Progress; Norton-Hale herself is directing Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert at the Aldeburgh Festival in June. She smiles knowingly when I nudge the conversation towards this apparent advocacy and muses, ‘I’m not starting from the position of “I will employ a woman”, but historically they have been under-employed in this industry so it’s great to be able to adjust that in a small way’. In particular she reflects, ‘Because of what happens to Manon in that story, I definitely wanted a woman’s interpretation of that absolutely horrendous nightmare. And when Jude listened to it and read the libretto and started work on the translation, she just said, “This is a nightmare!” and that’s what she’s staged. It’s amazing what she’s done because it’s witty and entertaining, and deadly serious.’

Libretto translations like Christian’s are not just about accessibility, Norton-Hale explains, adding, ‘I slightly shy away from the word “accessible’’ because, in my opinion, that should never be the reason one does something. If you’re doing something good, it should also be accessible.’ There are a few factors at play, she continues. ‘One of the things is that we have an opportunity to work with really exciting writers to put a slightly different spin on these really amazing, often hundreds-of-years-old works that have been done again and again. And each time they are performed in an interpretation by a director and a conductor and the singers, they are “a take” on it. And actually I think bringing in a librettist is just another element of that.’ Norton-Hale’s passion about her work is evident as she speaks, her fluorescent orange nails wrapped around her oat flat white and occasionally punctuating something especially poignant.

‘The other thing is that we’re performing in England and for most of our singers, English is their first language. Of course, opera singers are fantastic linguists, but when you are trying to create a character, it does help to work in your first language.’ Just as the singers might develop a deeper connection to their characters in English, the audience will have a more immediate experience: ‘However well you time surtitles, it is really hard to get the timing right for the joke. And the access element actually comes back to perception again. It’s amazing how many people still don’t know that if they go to see an opera that isn’t in English, there will be surtitles. So rather than explaining that, just say “It’s in English!”, then you just see the relief in people’s eyes.’

I’m curious as to what her views are more generally about opera’s image in contemporary society. The ETO’s mission to showcase the far-reaching relevance of opera feels noble, but I wonder how it’s been received. ‘There is so much opera now that is not mainstage, large-scale canonical work – and I understand why those operas are the first thing people think of – but the range of opera is huge. There is still a sense in some quarters that there’s “Proper Opera” and then there’s “Other Opera”.’ Where does this purist, elitist attitude stem from, I ask. ‘I do think – with apologies to who I’m talking to – that the media is partly to blame, in that I think a lot of people in the opera industry have worked really hard for years at changing not just the perception of opera but changing really what opera is and how easy it is to walk through the doors, literally or metaphorically. And yet, when opera gets mentioned in the press, it is still more often than not, accompanied by a picture of a woman in a viking helmet or there’s mention of the top price of tickets at the Royal Opera House.’

I challenge her gently about the contemporary nature of her work and whether ETO ever receives feedback lamenting the ‘wokeness’ of its productions. Her stance on these issues is matter-of-fact and self-assured: ‘By making an exciting piece of art, there will be some people who don’t like it. Hopefully there’ll be many more people who like it or love it. Of course, we get some letters from people saying “I loved this production”, and some letters saying “I really didn’t like this production”, and that’s fine. If you don’t get any letters, that means people went, “That was all right” and I’d rather they felt something. Of course I’d rather if what they felt was really positive but actually making people feel something is really good. It’s kind of the point.

‘I also think there is a danger sometimes, perhaps a snobbery, that because we tour outside London to the smaller cities and bigger towns, maybe there is an unconscious expectation somehow in the ether that audiences in these places will be more small-c conservative and less open to something a bit more adventurous and that just isn’t the case. Audiences outside London deserve interesting, challenging and thrilling work.’ ETO’s commitment to treat audiences with this respect creates an approach that is equal parts egalitarian and individualistic.

There is an unspoken ‘Why’ hanging over our conversation, particularly the focus on trying to appeal to a wider audience. What was it like to start her job amid such a depressing time of arts funding cuts and general economic uncertainty? ‘It was quite an uncomfortable and unsettling time. I had just started when the Arts Council’s funding announcements were made. So I did spend the first few months being asked to talk about that, partly because ETO got a small uplift, which was wonderful, and I think a recognition of the really high quality of our work and, of course, the fact that we tour. We didn’t feel celebratory about [the uplift] though because we operate in a much wider context and in an ecosystem. Our singers and players and directors and stage managers and everyone, they work across the whole opera ecosystem.’ In typical Norton-Hale style though, she sees the silver lining as an integral part of the cloud: ‘Having said that, I genuinely think it is an opportunity. It would be more of an opportunity if there was a bit more investment to support the change that’s happening, and that’s not the Arts Council’s fault. They only have the money they have.’

The show goes on regardless, and the ETO’s efforts are vibrantly positive, without a hint of desperation for their future. Norton-Hale is almost bursting with excitement to tell me about the spring season and the opportunity to direct Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert herself. ‘It feels like a bit of a treat to open that at the Aldeburgh Festival.’ Along with designer Eleanor Bull, the pair are going for an enticing approach of sublime romantic and Hitchcockian film noir, and pairing it with a ‘storytelling first half’ when toured in the autumn. The production will present an array of songs and dances written by anonymous 18th-century women collectively known as ‘A Lady’. ETO is commissioning a number of different writers to create new librettos based on folk tales from all over the world, and a composer to orchestrate the original pieces and write new music to complement ‘A Lady’.

For someone who has only been in her role for under two years, Norton-Hale seems utterly in the flow of her work. Looking back to when she started, I ask what one piece of advice she would have given herself then. She pauses and looks out the window at the bustling scenes of Mare Street at lunchtime. After a while she says, ‘It’s not advice but the timescales are a bit longer than you think. I started in autumn ’22 and so the first season I programmed was autumn ’23. And now in spring ’24, I kind of feel newer than I did before, and I thought when I started that I would be really bedded in by now. In lots of ways I am: I have a really good team, I know them well, I completely trust them. But I think it’s a big job and it’s a company that’s been going for a really long time doing brilliant work. But that’s not really advice… Maybe it’s just “Be patient”. You don’t have to do everything all at once.’ 

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Opera Now. Never miss an issue – subscribe today