AS unlikely saviours go, Tony Hall must be up there with the small boats that evacuated Dunkirk and the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke. Back in autumn 2000 he was known to the public, if at all, as the grey, corporate-speak Head of News in John Birt’s grey, corporate-speak BBC. But beneath the suit lurked a tumultuous passion. Hall was an opera-lover. And when the poisoned chalice of running the Royal Opera House was being profferred to the usual bunch of reluctant arts grandees again — for the fourth time in five years — the grey man from the BBC edged himself forward and seized the acrid cup.
Never mind that Hall had never run anything theatrical or lyric in his life. Or that Covent Garden, even after its lottery-funded £214 million redevelopment, seemed in perpetual crisis — its torrid backstage soap opera offering far more gripping entertainment than the real operas on the stage. Or that, as chief executive, Hall would be lumbered with a chairman, Sir Colin Southgate, who exhibited a talent bordering on genius for rubbing people up the wrong way. To declare that the opera world was sceptical of Hall’s survival chances would be the understatement of the century. There was open scorn, laced with hilarity. He was expected to scuttle back to Television Centre within a year. But four years later, Hall has not scuttled. On the contrary, he sits in his majestic office, loftily overlooking the madding crowd in the piazza, with a smile that seems dangerously adjacent to blissful. As well it might. By common consent, the Opera House has been turned round.
What was once a source of endless embarrassment is now perceived as a prime cultural asset — albeit a high-maintenance one, devouring £22 million of taxpayers’ money a year. Critics who were vitriolic about Covent Garden’s astronomical prices now purr about its “laudable” efforts to woo young and first-time opera-goers. Instead of running seven-figure deficits and leading the wailing chorus of luvvies calling for more subsidy, Covent Garden now balances its books with the prim rectitude of a Scottish spinster running a teashop.
Somehow, the slight, self-effacing roundhead has tamed a den of egomaniac cavaliers. Rather than radiating an aura of inertia mingled with incompetence and panic, Hall’s opera house now gives journalists nothing to write about — except the quality of the shows on the stage. How unsporting!
Even a potential debacle such as last September’s bust-up with La Scala, Milan, was so adroitly handled that the Royal Opera came out smelling of roses. Covent Garden wanted to make minor adjustments to a borrowed La Scala production. La Scala’s music director, Riccardo Muti, hissed displeasure and threatened not to conduct the show. A less confident Covent Garden management would have caved in, but Hall stuck to his guns, even when an Italian newspaper accused him of “acting like an Italian”. “Well, I was emotional about it!” he says. “And cheesed off on behalf of our audience.”
In the end, Muti didn’t come. Antonio Pappano, Covent Garden’s brilliant music director, conducted instead. And it was La Scala that subsequently imploded, not the Royal Opera. Hall doesn’t gloat about that outcome, but permits himself a wry smile. “Let’s just say that what has happened in Milan since then doesn’t surprise me,” he says. The incident added yet more lustre to his reputation. And now there are very few people in the opera world who won’t admit to believing something that seemed unthinkable in 2001: that Hall, in his very British, very unflappy way, has wrought a small miracle at Covent Garden. So how on earth has he pulled it off?
One answer is that he did something which the Covent Garden management hadn’t done for ages. He listened to people — punters, prima donnas, stagehands, sponsors. “When I came here,” Hall says, “Ted Downes (the veteran Covent Garden conductor) told me: ‘Opera is all about teams, you know.’ I never forgot that. We now have a meeting, at noon every Tuesday, for everybody to come together as a team. And we just talk about what we can do better.”
The tender loving care worked. Leaving Pappano to make artistic decisions and drive up performing standards, Hall concentrated on dissolving tensions in one of the West End’s most disputatious theatres. “Until he arrived, Covent Garden was the leakiest, most paranoid and fractured arts organisation on the planet,” an insider recalls. “Tony dispelled negativity.” Suddenly, the Opera House began to exude pleasure in its work again.
That was a start. But the real challenge was to change the public’s perception. “All those myths about the opera house being elitist, a rich person’s club, or giving the impression to young people that they wouldn’t be welcome — I realised that I had to knock those down,” Hall says. How? “Partly by using data: by pointing out that, for instance, 60 per cent of our audience earn less than £30,000 a year. Or that 25 per cent are under 35. Or that, while our corporate members are important, because they fund the place, they constitute only 5 per cent of the audience. All these statistics help us to say ‘This is not the audience you think it is’.”
Unfortunately, the one figure that sticks in people’s minds, or their gullets, is the top-price ticket for top-price operas — £180 next season. “Yes, this place always gets judged — and, if you like, hung — by that,” Hall admits. “And if a new government said to me ‘Here’s an extra £10 million of subsidy’ I would certainly lower top-price tickets to less than £100, and try to end the impression that you need a thick wallet to come here. But that ain’t going to happen. There are too many other arts organisations that need supporting.”
Instead, Hall has introduced a series of crafty marketing schemes designed to counter the impression that only the rich can afford a Covent Garden visit, without actually giving away more cheap tickets than the opera house can afford. One is the “£50 top price” offer for difficult-to-sell modern operas. “It really works,” Hall enthuses. “Sophie’s Choice, brand new opera: packed out. Wozzeck: packed out.”
Another is the “£10 Mondays” scheme, sponsored by Travelex: “We offered a thousand £10 tickets for the best seats on alternate Mondays,” Hall says. “Nearly 24,000 people went on line to book them, of which 87 per cent were new to the opera house. Fabulous result!” But what about the 23,000 disappointed punters? This is where the scheme’s ingenuity kicks in: “What’s essential is that we then know the online whereabouts of 20,000 new people. That transforms marketing.”
Hall has an equally bullish attitude towards commercial exploitation of the opera house’s sumptuous facilities. In his four years there, fundraising and sponsorship has doubled to more than £20 million a year. That has been achieved by embracing everything from auctions to pop concerts (Björk and Sir Elton John have both graced the stage) to corporate events. “There’s a win-win aspect to letting out the Floral Hall for something like the Olympic launch, ” Hall claims. “First, we make money. Secondly, the public sees our spaces being used.”
