Well, this isn't business as usual at English National Opera. Traditionally, the ENO music directorship has been one of the most hotly debated in the U.K. When it is announced that the hunt is on for a new one, pundits opine, polls are drawn up and the chattering classes, well, chatter. And once an MD is appointed, there tends to be gossip before they go. So, the news that Edward Gardner is stepping down after only seven years is almost as much of a shock as the simultaneous announcement that Mark Wigglesworth will follow him.
Let's start with the first part. Founding music director Charles Corri was there for 37 years. Mark Elder, the most successful MD there in recent history, was there for 14. OK, others were in situ for much shorter periods, Paul Daniel for eight, Sian Edwards for only two (but she was deemed a failure, though I liked her). But Gardner has been such an ostentatious success story, not least as a protégé of Elder's, and the match of job to man seemed so ideal that we all expected him to be another Elder, in tenure length as well as in popularity.
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