Payne quits National Opera

Nicholas Payne, the general director of the English National Opera, has resigned after one of the most turbulent years in the company's history.

Mr Payne quit after being warned at a board meeting that the pressures of running the opera as well as overseeing ENO's huge rebuilding project and administration were too much for one man.

The board has appointed Caroline Felton, a former Coopers& Lybrand consultant, to take immediate charge of the ENO's management, while a search begins for Mr Payne's artistic successor.

Anthony Whitworth-Jones, the boss of Dallas opera and a former Glyndebourne chief, is thought to be the early favourite.

A former director of the Royal Opera, Mr Payne joined as head of the ENO four years ago and has sought to win back dwindling audiences with daring makeovers to traditional operas.

But he has spent the past few months defending his idea from critics, one of whom described his recent productions as "an alarming series of flops".

Two operas by controversial Spanish director Calixto Bieito, Mozart's Don Giovanni and Verdi's A Masked Ball, scandalised audiences with their depictions of oral sex, cocaine snorting and the chorus singing on toilets.