The English National Opera has played down comments made by their chairman, Martin Smith, in relation to the company's acclaimed performance at last year's Glastonbury Festival.
Smith was talking at a closed seminar on increasing accessibility to opera. He made reference to ENO's performance of Wagner's
'Ride Of The Valkyries' at the music festival last summer, joking that this was a performance for people who "hardly knew how to spell opera". Some in the media have suggested those comments are patronising to the Glastonbury festival goer.
However a spokesman for ENO said the comments had been taken out of context. "The chairman was speaking with regard to the impact the ENO had going to Glastonbury. The seminar was about reaching new audiences, which is what the ENO is trying to do in different and unexpected ways."
They say Smith's full comment ran thus: "We put [The Ride of the Valkyries] on in front of 50,000 people who had never heard or hardly knew how to spell opera, and they were completely and utterly riveted by it. The audience were enraptured by what was going on. There was absolute silence."