The Scottish Opera and the Welsh National Opera are responding to the recent cuts from the Arts Council England.

A week after the news was released that the English National Opera was losing funding from the council, the Scottish Opera took to social media and said, “The Arts Council England announced cuts to our opera family last week and it would appear to us that there was both a lack of transparency and clear strategy in the decision process. This news is, without a doubt, heart-breaking for the sector and devastating for the hundreds of individuals whose jobs across the UK are affected, as well as for opera audiences and supporters. These are critical times for the cultural landscape of our nations.”

The company concluded by asking everyone to sign the petition launched by Bryn Terfel to save the English National Opera’s funding.

Meanwhile, the Welsh National Opera’s General Director Aidan Lang spoke about the cuts that the company received. He told the Guardian, “We are struggling to understand what the opera policy is at ACE with both ourselves and Glyndebourne Touring Opera being so heavily cut. Obviously provision of opera to England is going to have to come down. But we don’t know how that gap is going to be filled – if we don’t go to these cities who does? The advantage of cross-border funding fundamentally is that both countries get the benefits of a full-time opera company at a proportion of the actual cost. It’s all very well just taking the money out of England but it’s not quite as straightforward as reducing the proportionate number of performances we give in England.