Has English National Opera abandoned its commitment to singing in English? On Tuesday at the Barbican in London, the company performed a thrilling concert performance of Thaïs by Massenet, with the extraordinary Elizabeth Futral in the title role. It felt like a very special event - the last concert performance in London was by the Chelsea Opera Group in 1989, and it hasn't been staged here since 1926. But why were ENO singing it in French?

It was certainly a question that seemed to be exercising the audience, and with reason. Singing in English is, after all, part of the company's official mission statement. According to ENO music director Paul Daniel, however, the reasons for performing Thaïs in French (and, next month, Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi in Italian) are largely practical.

This autumn, ENO is presenting a short season at the Barbican, while the Coliseum, its main home, is refurbished. It has proved technically impossible, Daniel says, for a full repertory to be presented at the Barbican. So ENO is doing just two fully staged works, Cosi Fan Tutte and The Rape of Lucretia, with a series of concert performances around the edges. "We are playing away, doing something a little different," says Daniel. "This would never happen in a staged production - absolutely not."

In addition, translating a libretto into English is not seen as a worthwhile investment for just two concert performances and, since the cast in this case is heavy on guest artists, it is felt to be impractical for singers who have learned the roles in their original languages to relearn them in English.

Daniel argues that there is a precedent for ENO singing in foreign languages in concert - La Gioconda was done in the same way during ENO's Italian Season in 2000, a decision that no one questioned at the time.

He also points out that staged versions of Verdi's Requiem and Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex have been sung by ENO in Latin, while John Buller's 1992 opera The Bacchae was sung in Greek (a slightly different argument operates when we are talking of works in ancient languages; Cocteau's libretto for Oedipus, for instance, was translated into Latin from French as a self-conscious distancing technique).

However, for ENO not to be singing in English at the moment is rather bad timing. Daniel says: "We don't have a charter that says we always perform in English." Except they do, as near as dammit ("ENO sustains its core values by direct communication in English, the language it shares with its audiences" is the precise wording of that mission statement). Just as the Royal Opera's exile from its home in Covent Garden contributed to confusion about what the company stood for, so it is with ENO.

This confusion has been exacerbated by ENO's lacerating recent history. Daniel acknowledges that "we are very isolated - it is a very fragile time". ENO's stabilisation strategy has yet to be given the green light by Arts Council England, although, in January, they agreed in principle to give the company a cash injection. Sean Doran, the newish artistic director and chief executive, is yet to prove himself, and doubts about his experience and abilities still abound.

With ENO momentarily lapsing from English (and so successfully), it seems reasonable to question, in these days of surtitles, the notion of singing in our native language at all. Why not perform all operas in the language they were written? And, in the case of English-language libretti, why not use surtitles as an aid to comprehensibility - as the Royal Opera did with its recent production of The Turn of the Screw?

Daniel is pretty clear on that: he thinks that surtitles make audiences passive and "castrated". "You cannot feel an opera in your bollocks if you are just having the information fed to you. It's like watching Playboy TV instead of having sex." It's so heartening to hear someone getting off the fence once in a while.

· When the former culture minister was moved in the June reshuffle to transport, it was a mournful day for the arts. No longer would we have the joy of Howells making a complete tit of himself by blaming "macho idiot rappers" for creating a culture where "killing is almost a fashion accessory" or calling Britart "cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit". It is with misty-eyed fondness, then, that we remark that he is already putting his foot in it over rail issues. Speaking to the Fabian Society on Tuesday, he blamed trainspotters for exerting undue influence on transport policy, and said cars were greener than trains. God bless the poor dear soul.