Ten years ago, London's home of the high arts was broken and almost bankrupt. Now, with high-risk shows and queues round the block, it's all swagger
"A manager of a London opera house is a man who carries about a barrel of gunpowder and cannot put it down because he is pursued with flaming torches. The poor devil runs as fast as his legs will carry him and would trample on the bodies of his father, wife or children if they got in his way." Hector Berlioz, 1851
The smooth, smartly suited Tony Hall never looks like he is running, but he is. Lord Hall of Birkenhead, as he now is, quoted Berlioz's remark last weekend in a speech at St Anne's College, Oxford.
A few days from his 60th birthday, he had just risked his reputation by having 2,268 people troop into Covent Garden for a new opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage based on the hopeful but ultimately doomed life of Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. How would London's operagoers react to a libretto full of expletives? And shortly after returning to London, he would attend another black tie gala for the opening of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Royal Ballet's first new full-length production for 16 years, for which some had paid �5,000 a ticket.
So that was quite a barrel of gunpowder to be carrying. Meanwhile, to the left of him, were cries of "public sector fat cat" due to his salary of �390,000, while to the right came the torch carriers with their government cuts. In his speech, Hall made clear what would happen if either production met bafflement and disdain: "If [they had] bombed, there'd be financial losses ? big losses. And there'd be reputational risk ? to Covent Garden, to all of us, to the artists."
As a result, the theatre he runs, with Monica Mason of the Royal Ballet, and Tony Pappano as musical director, was fizzing with tension and excitement over the past few weeks. From the corridors above London's famous piazza along which singers swept, to the astonishing tableau of a major ballet in the final stages of rehearsal in the main auditorium, the house felt like a dream conjured up in the mind of one of the wannabes who have flocked to this spot for as long as a theatre has stood in London's Bow Street.
Now, both shows have sold out. The audiences came and the critics approved. At Anna Nicole, there were gasps, but thrilled gasps. Alice's gala last Monday set Twitter afire. "Clever, beautiful. Amazing performances," tweeted the Guardian's arts correspondent, Charlotte Higgins.
All this seems a long way from the place in which the Opera House found itself before Hall took over, 10 years ago this April. Then there was no money to pay staff. At one juncture, the entire board resigned. Then, to quote the critic Norman Lebrecht in his book Covent Garden: The Untold Story ? Dispatches From the English Culture War 1945-2000: "The Royal Opera House was no longer running, but reeling about like a mugging victim, the lifeblood gushing from its head. Its direction was staggered and inconclusive."
And yet, as the bouquets fall on Hall and his team, there is that huge salary. And other questions. In these troubled times, are we justified in granting �27m each year to this behemoth that squats on two-and-a-half acres at the heart of London, allowing it to pursue the highest of the high arts? As one insider put it, "One new ballet in so long isn't that impressive." What does the Royal Opera House really offer the nation?
It was the craze for Italian opera that saw the first theatre built on the site in 1732, oddly enough due to a play that actually satirised opera. Actor-manager John Rich commissioned The Beggar's Opera and made so much money, he could afford to put up the building.
Handel performed some of his first works there, including Alcina and Semele. The theatre burnt down twice, in 1808 and again in 1856. It became the Royal Opera House in 1892.
The music publishers Boosey and Hawkes rescued it after it had become a Mecca dance hall in the Second World War, bringing in Ninette de Valois's Sadler's Wells ballet and reopening on 20 February 1946 with a gala performance of The Sleeping Beauty with Margot Fonteyn.
Despite great moments in the 60s, the opera house was seen as unfit for the 21st century and there began, from the 70s onwards, the tortuous process that would eventually see the theatre closed for renovation and the budget for renewal rise from an estimated �56m in the late 80s to �214m.
This burgeoning cost, in the words of Genista MacIntosh, ex-chief executive, "gave licence to the latent hostility to art and artists that has been evident in this country for a long time".
Lebrecht, when he wrote his book in 2000, argued that by restricting the seating to 2,268, exclusivity was built into the bricks of the Opera House and that "in terms of tradition, pleasure or aspiration" it held no interest to the minorities who make up so much of London's population. "The company's roots in its own city were thinning... it was this loss of relevance, more than any personal or financial failure, that brought successive ROH boards to their knees."
And yet, viewed from another angle, in the battle to rebuild we saw the beginnings of a cultural renaissance. "With lottery money flowing, it began a process that saw the renovation of our cultural infrastructure that would go on to include the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester's Salford Quays and the Baltic in Newcastle," says historian and Labour MP Tristram Hunt. "But it was also about opening up the arts; that was the only way of justifying such levels of state funding."
That view was expressed in Hall, who was, in 1999, losing out to Greg Dyke in the race to become director general of the BBC. Hall, who had joined the corporation straight from Oxford, is one of those figures who progressed fast. He edited The 9 O'Clock News at the age of 34 and set up Radio 5 Live, BBC News 24 and BBC Parliament.
From the beginning of his reign as chief executive, Hall took on Lebrecht's criticisms. His fight to broaden the audience for Covent Garden has been astute and strategic. His first chairman, Sir Colin Southgate, had not helped, telling a reporter he wouldn't welcome people in "a singlet, smelly shorts and trainers". (It was a remark Southgate came to bitterly regret and he went on to say, on retiring: "I think I'm leaving behind an ace team ? Hall, Pappano and Mason. They haven't had a better team at the Opera House ? ever.")
New operas have a �75 top price, with standing room at �4. And there have been a series of performances in association with the Sun that shocked the more hoity-toity. For a performance of Carmen, the paper headlined its ticket offer: "Carmen Get It". The Sun parked the famous double decker bus in which it ships Page 3 girls round outside Covent Garden's famous portico.
In June, the ballet will take Romeo and Juliet to the O2. They will need to sell 52,000 seats over the run and perform without the proscenium arch. For the opera, the latest scheme was yesterday's release of Carmen in 3D. Again, this seems to be catching the cultural wave, as 3D now seems to be breathing life into what was for so long a dreary idea ? opera, theatre and ballet on screen.
And then there are the efforts to make sure some of the advantages bestowed on the Royal Opera House benefit the rest of the country. The smaller theatres are turned over to younger artists. Says Hall: "They use the studio spaces to try out new ideas, stretch their wings, do things that later in their professional careers they might not be able ? or have the time or money ? to do."
As the tableau during the rehearsal of Alice showed, this seems to be working. It is not just choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, sitting near the stage, or composer Joby Talbot beside him, or designer Bob Crowley, but the technical staff scattered around about.
Here, in one room, were some fine British theatrical talents. The ghostly presence of those people who suffered during the rebuild can take cheer from this, but inevitably it is Hall, with Mason and Pappano, who will be seen as having brought the ROH from disaster to glory.
Is that worth �390,000 of our money? The future seems unforgiving. Hunt again: "Tony Hall does a great job, but it's an overinflated salary, which is something he'll be familiar with from his time at the BBC." That is the voice of an MP and friend of the arts.
Marika Dominczyk Dita Von Teese Rachel Nichols Dido Joss Stone
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