Now, we are talking about a moment in 1971, and to be fair I was not back then into opera, so I suppose it was easy to miss the discussions which were centered around using the disused Central Railway Station as a home for a regional opera house at a cost of several million pounds”.*
Well, that was how I read it, but on a more careful reread, the plan was to clear the station buildings and use the site.
This was an alternative for one “in the Princess Street and Portland Street area", which was less desirable because of the “high cost of the land” and “pressure from developers”.
The bigger questions of a regional opera house had been rumbling on since 1965 when the Arts Council floated the idea of Manchester as a site for one the three regional opera houses, and gained ground with the proposals for local government reform which set the city at the heart of a new county council.
But the stumbling block remained the simple one of whether there would be sufficient public footfall for such a venture, and what extent the other city and borough councils would support it.
This replicated an earlier concern that a partnership of Manchester City Council and the Arts Council might not be enough to secure the financial viability of the project.
All of which led the Guardian in 1970 to reflect the “some of the steam has gone out of Manchester’s great advance in the arts … [in contrast to] the sixties when so much enthusiasm was generated for arts projects that the city began to seem like the birth place of a new Renaissance”.**
All of which seemed very different just a few years earlier, when there were proposals for “a £5 million art centre, including an opera house, theatre and film centre”.
And when the city planners, envisaged that a new opera house and theatre along with the retention of the traditional Oxford Road entertainment area, at the expense of the old warehouses and offices.
Most ambitious of all was the scheme for a “continuous high-level pedestrian way from Central station, which is being considered as a city exhibition hall – across Oxford Road, through the entertainment area, across Princes Street and past the art gallery into the cultural area, eventually connecting with Piccadilly Plaza and through Piccadilly Gardens”.***
Location; Manchester
Picture; Central Railway Station, 1978, from the collection of Andy Robertson
*Disused station maybe arts site, Michael Morris, Guardian, February 1st, 1971
**Manchester without a Messiah, Denis Johnson, the Guardian, February 4th, 1970
This was an alternative for one “in the Princess Street and Portland Street area", which was less desirable because of the “high cost of the land” and “pressure from developers”.
The bigger questions of a regional opera house had been rumbling on since 1965 when the Arts Council floated the idea of Manchester as a site for one the three regional opera houses, and gained ground with the proposals for local government reform which set the city at the heart of a new county council.
But the stumbling block remained the simple one of whether there would be sufficient public footfall for such a venture, and what extent the other city and borough councils would support it.
This replicated an earlier concern that a partnership of Manchester City Council and the Arts Council might not be enough to secure the financial viability of the project.
All of which seemed very different just a few years earlier, when there were proposals for “a £5 million art centre, including an opera house, theatre and film centre”.
And when the city planners, envisaged that a new opera house and theatre along with the retention of the traditional Oxford Road entertainment area, at the expense of the old warehouses and offices.
Most ambitious of all was the scheme for a “continuous high-level pedestrian way from Central station, which is being considered as a city exhibition hall – across Oxford Road, through the entertainment area, across Princes Street and past the art gallery into the cultural area, eventually connecting with Piccadilly Plaza and through Piccadilly Gardens”.***
Location; Manchester
Picture; Central Railway Station, 1978, from the collection of Andy Robertson
*Disused station maybe arts site, Michael Morris, Guardian, February 1st, 1971
**Manchester without a Messiah, Denis Johnson, the Guardian, February 4th, 1970
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