The English National Opera has been savaged for its production of Kismet. “Underlying the criticism is a sense of mystification that ENO should have put on Kismet, which is set in Baghdad at the time of the Arabian Nights, at all: a disquiet about what it means for the company – once at the cutting edge of radical opera – to be mounting a West End show with a West End star, Michael Ball, in the lead. And messing it up. Is this what they are subsidised for?”