What really happened
Keith Cooper explains why he is making a follow-up programme on the Royal Opera House
I've been watching Grant Mitchell close- ly. You might think the EastEnders occa- sional wife basher and general bully-boy is hardly a great role model. But he was the man I was most mistaken for when the BBC documentary The House was screened a few years back. What are the similarities (apart from our baldness)? Is it his 'the man whom women would most like to reform' persona? Or the cold, calculating way he appears to deal with anyone who disagrees with him or bruwer Phil? What- ever. I'm too close to tell.
On 26 February, I was fired from the Royal Opera House by the then chief exec- utive officer, Mary Allen. A month later she also left after a disagreement with her new chairman, Sir Colin Southgate, over the way in which the Opera House should be managed.
Two days after my departure, Double Exposure, the production company which made The House, called: the BBC was interested in making a programme with me. Was I interested? Hadn't I learnt my lesson? The chance to interview Mary and my previous bosses, Sir Jeremy Isaacs and Peter Jonas (ex-English National Opera and now in Munich), plus the opera critic Rodney Milnes, opera buff and bal- letomane Frank Johnson and Gerald Kauf- man MP proved irresistible. So, yes, I've been seduced into making a follow-up: Trouble at the House.
Although it has courted crisis throughout the last decade, during the last 12 months Covent Garden seems to have reached rock bottom. As I was part of it, I am in a better position than most to recount what really happened and, more importantly, who let it happen and how do we ensure it never happens again.
A tall order, given the convolutions and complexities of events since 1995. For a start, you need to tell the story. Colin Spec- tor, the director, kept saying, 'Not another character, please!' when I insisted we deal not only with Opera House events but also with the equally theatrical Commons Select Committee inquiry. Enter stage left Gerald Kaufman MP, revealing a quiet pride in the fact that his committee's recommendations had achieved such an outcome: the resigna- tion of Lord Chadlington, then chairman, and his entire board. To say nothing of those of us who were later felled or per- suaded to fall on our swords. Holding cen- tre-stage is Jeremy Isaacs, telling us exactly what he thought of Kaufman, who 'as in so many things got it 180 degrees wrong'. It was tough asking Ms Allen why she fired me but tougher admitting her reply had no part in the programme. Something strange happened during editing. I realised this wasn't my story, it was a far more impor- tant tale of a great institution brought to near collapse.
Was the crisis inevitable? Probably. Years of underfunding had increased reliance on private and corporate patron- age. A desire to maintain standards had forced up prices to compensate. The place became exclusive almost before realising it, losing the support of even some of its most loyal fans, the Friends of Covent Garden. The case for a publicly funded 'internation- al' opera house along European lines didn't just founder at the time of the controver- `That's better.' sial Lottery award. The Opera House had forgotten the need to fight for support in the Seventies and Eighties, so by 1995 it was too late.
When Jeremy left Covent Garden in 1996 it was in much better shape financially than some would have us believe. Artisti- cally the opera company under Nicholas Payne had been rejuvenated, and the ballet company, directed by Anthony Dowell, was dancing wonderfully. After a 20-year wait, the redevelopment was finally on course, the Lottery money secured and private money to match was pouring in via Vivien Duffield. Finally, Jeremy was handing over to the popular, experienced administrator Genista McIntosh, from the National The- atre.
However, there was a new and more interventionist chairman, who asked, even told, Jeremy to go early. With no decent hand-over period, Genista, understandably, failed and resigned after only five months. Chadlington's decision to bring in Mary Allen from the Arts Council without an interview made things worse. The damning Select Committee report followed and the rest is history.
Last but by no means least in my 'why did it go so wrong' theory is the powerful influence of the non-executive boards and the principal donors. Many of them have the best interests of the Opera House at heart. But there are several different sub- sidiary boards, councils, committees, gover- nors, advisory panels — and all want a piece of the action. If they are putting vast amounts of their own money in, who can blame them? But those groups are inevitably going to be difficult to manage and frequently will be in conflict. But I'm in danger of telling you too much ...
Take your pick from the above, sprinkle with management consultants and well- meaning reports and you have an organisa- tion in crisis. An organisation which is unable to determine either why things went wrong or what should be done about it.
And what of the poor artists and staff? Haven't they been let down, forgotten even? Jeremy believed that the best case for support was made by the work on stage; however, in the end that wasn't enough. It's going to take some masterful spin-doctor- ing to repair the tarnished image of opera and ballet and a great number of reforms to convince Gordon Brown that the arts, let alone the Opera House, deserves more support.
What do I do next? Should Jeremy Pax- man be worried? I canvassed friends as to whether they thought I looked like Ross Kemp (aka Grant Mitchell). Rubbish. They commented on my striking resemblance to Clive James and Benjamin Netanyahu. What does that say for my future?
Keith Cooper was director of corporate affairs at the Royal Opera House from 1992 to 1998; Trouble at the House is on BBC 2 on Monday, 20 July at 9.30 p.m.
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