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Tony Hall, executive director of the Royal Opera House

Opera for the people wins applause at Covent Garden

David Lister Media
Monday 29 July 2002 00:00 BST
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A senior BBC executive remarked the other day that she had never seen Tony Hall looking so relaxed. Hall's last months at the BBC, before making the completely unforeseen transfer to the Royal Opera House a year ago, had been rather eventful.

He was a candidate to be director-general, but was beaten to the top job by Greg Dyke. He was a respected head of news and current affairs, but was powerless to stop Panorama being moved to a graveyard slot. He was also handed the highly visible duty of increasing the BBC's ethnic minority staff, and styled himself the corporation's race champion.

He was making progress with that goal when he surprised the BBC and the world of international opera by becoming executive director of the ROH. Again, it is hardly a calming job. The last few heads of the Royal Opera House had left well before their expected time. The institution was attacked by press and Government for its high prices, for not encouraging greater access, for its deficits and arrogance.

But just over a year into the task, Hall has successfully wrestled with the pricing policy, gone some way towards encouraging new audiences and young artists with the studio theatres run by the former Royal Ballet dancer Deborah Bull, and increased the number of live relays on to big screens, which have included the ballet company for the first time. He will also shortly announce a £200,000 surplus.

There was another reason, too, why he looked utterly relaxed as we chatted in his office at Covent Garden. He was enthused with a new idea and was enjoying revealing its rather whimsical and radical nature.

The splendid, redeveloped Floral Hall with its bars, restaurant, and balconies with views over the area is open to the public all day; but of course – one of the things that is now so obvious but which was never considered by those spending the lottery money at the time -- the public don't know that they are allowed to go in, or indeed what is inside.

The ROH claims that 250,000 people have been in during the day in the past 12 months, including those seeing lunchtime performances in the studio theatres or booking tickets. But Hall knows that most passers-by do not realise they can enter. He had just returned from Sydney and had noted opera house staff there in their red tunics directing people in off the street. Are we about to witness something similar?

"I was impressed in Sydney,'' he says. "There were people outside Sydney Opera House in the piazza with sandwich boards and red jerkins saying, 'Did you know you could come inside the building?'

"We need something here. We need signage. We need to tell people they can get the best views across Covent Garden. I'm not sure about the red jerkins, but we will do something along those lines.''

Getting people in off the street to see the building with the hope that they might then wish to see a performance is part of Hall's grand strategy to increase access. It is a strategy with a number of strands.

First, he has wooed in a younger audiences with decidedly non-operatic performances. "Bjork brought in a whole new range of people,'' he says. "Elton John in September will do the same. On Sunday 17 August we've got Notting Hill Carnival coming to show their costumes and parade across the main stage. I was really, really keen for them to come here because it's an opening up of this place.

"If we can bring people into the building and they think 'wow' and come and see something else here ... Already in the Linbury and Clore studios we have new audiences supporting new work by new talent. That is vitally important.''

The education work at Covent Garden has, he says, "been pushed to the side in the past ... scattered around the House and with the Friends. So I've pulled it all together. Before it was concentrated on people who already knew a lot and wanted to learn more.

"That's fine, as far as it goes. But now we want to expand into events involving families, children and first timers – families particularly.

"For the first time we've taken the big screen relays beyond the Covent Garden piazza. Four thousand people watched the Royal Ballet on screen dancing Romeo and Juliet at a park in Hackney. Kids were running around on the grass. I watched an Afro-Caribbean woman with her arms round her child watching the performance. I don't believe a lot of those people would have come to the Opera House.

"I want to be a lot more ambitious about these relays. We have put our production of Rigoletto into Odeon cinemas. In Glasgow there were crowds of people queuing to get in.

"That's another thing which gives a pointer to the direction I'm going in. If you take that production of Rigoletto, 900,000 people also watched it on TV and there were 7,000 DVDs sold. So that's a whole raft of other people who are getting access to this place.''

Hall, who is from Wirral, understands better than most of his predecessors the disaffection felt by those in the north of England, or indeed anywhere far from London, at the large sums of money going to an institution from which they feel they receive no benefit. "I am from the North, so I feel this strongly. What I'm planning at the moment is screens in the North- east and the South-west.''

He is also talking with his former colleagues at the BBC about increasing the number of televised performances.

It still should not be beyond the wit of man for the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet to tour inside the UK. The ballet company does manage America, Australia and Japan. But that's one nut that even Tony Hall has not managed to crack, muttering about "the expense".

While his big-screen relays and emphasis on education work are admirable and have given his tenure its character, the screen is no substitute for the real thing. The fact remains that the two national opera companies, the Royal Opera and the English National Opera, are based in London and do no UK touring. "It's difficult with the opera," Hall says. "It is expensive. But, yes, it should be possible with the Royal Ballet, and certainly with the small-scale stuff we do. But you should not underestimate the importance of the big-screen relays.

"We base our education work in the areas where the screens are going to be. We get the kids to bring their parents; and then we can bring families here to Covent Garden on discounted tickets. So you have a cycle – the big screens, the education work, visits to the opera house, the Paul Hamlyn-sponsored weeks where there are cheap tickets ..."

What is also healthier is that opera-goers who can get to Covent Garden will find that Hall has brought some sanity to the cost of tickets. "When I first came here I froze half of the house. I said that at every single performance half would be £50 or less. It doesn't give cheap access to the stalls, but it does help.

"Now I've done that freeze for the second year running; but I'm also experimenting with some new productions [the operas Wozzeck and Sophie's Choice] where the top price will be £50. That's another way of combining really interesting work with making them more affordable. I'm spending a lot of time looking at pricing, seeing how we can answer those who say it's expensive.''

The biggest culture shock for Hall was the lack of teamwork and the reluctance to share information at Covent Garden. The rivalry between different departmentsstill common in the arts – most notably at museums and not least at opera houses – was a genuine surprise.

"Building teams has been what I'm really concentrating on," he says. "I found there was a lot of very good information around the place, but it wasn't shared, and where we were going wasn't shared. It's vital that the opera and ballet know where each other is going.

"So I brought people together. Internal communications needed a real boost. We haven't got that right yet; but I do sense a very confident organisation now.''

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