THE Opera House will not reopen until next autumn, the theatre’s interim director Andy Eagle has confirmed.
Although the building will be officially handed over by the government to Jersey Opera House Ltd by the end of this year as had been promised, around £3 million of specialist work to replace ageing sound and lighting systems remains to be completed, using additional funds generated by the company from a combination of philanthropy and borrowing.
Mr Eagle described as “brilliant” the government’s £12.7m restoration of the theatre – which closed in 2020 at the start of the Covid pandemic – but he confirmed that upgrades to what he called “the infrastructure that goes into putting on good shows” had not been included in the main contract.
“I think it’s really important to say that the government has invested in the old house, which has been brilliant. It’s taken a long time but they recognise the need for it. It will be a vast improvement but what they haven’t done is incorporate some of the things that we use as an operating theatre in order to put on really good shows,” he explained.
Most of the theatre’s stage equipment is some 25 years old, dating from the first refurbishment of the theatre undertaken by the Jersey Arts Trust during the late 1990s, and much of the old tungsten lights are no longer commercially available.
Moving from an analogue to a digital world has extended the period of the theatre’s closure by around six months, and local clubs and societies seeking to book the theatre are being told that it will not be available until October.
Mr Eagle described the refurbished auditorium – which members of the media were invited to inspect this week – as “fantastic” but he said it was important also to understand the urgency of modernising the theatre’s infrastructure.
“You can have a lovely auditorium and you can have lovely bars but the all-important bit is what goes on the stage and what the audiences see. So by investing in that, we will be able to do a greater level of better quality, more interesting shows from the UK, and we’ll be able to provide equipment for local community groups. That means they can do really interesting stuff that previously they would not have been able to do, which is all part of their development,” he said.
The Opera House expects to publish in May details of its first programme since the theatre’s closure, Mr Eagle added.
Andy Eagle is the subject of the Saturday Interview in this weekend’s JEP.
