David Alden: ‘Those still working at ENO show human resilience to an idiotic degree’

No-one looking at the ever-expanding activities of Grange Park Opera would believe that opera is under threat. The country-house season moved to the gardens of the late Bamber Gascoigne’s mansion at West Horsley Place in Surrey, when he inherited the estate from his aunt the Duchess of Roxburghe; he made the grounds available to the company when it was homeless in 2016. An opera house in the woods was built in record time, and has mounted ever-more ambitious summer seasons. It now aims to build