The New Face of Opera.(Statistical Data Included)

When London's Royal Opera House reopened last December after a four- year, $300 million renovation, the audience was struck by more than just the gleaming new architecture. On the program, the queen was relegated to second place below Citigroup, the evening's sponsor. The labyrinthine Floral Hall was transformed into a vast, airy foyer renamed after Alberto Vilar, a Cuban-American high-tech investor and arts lover who contributed $17 million to the project. And the clubby old Crush Bar, where Princess Diana used to sip drinks, was turned into an open space for corporate entertaining. Not surprisingly, the man responsible for the changes comes from America, where corporate sponsors and private donors are as inevitable as the ladies'-room line during intermission. Michael Kaiser, who resigned last summer from his job as ROH director to run Washington's Kennedy Center, says the opera house had no choice but to compensate for dwindling government subsidies. "The pressure throughout Europe right now is to build private funding," he says.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. From Venice to Berlin, Europe's opera houses are facing shrinking federal budgets, crumbling infrastructures, an aging core audience and accusations of elitism--not to mention the rapid incursion of mass media. "There is a question now over what part performing arts play in a culture where there are manifold possibilities for entertainment," says British opera historian Norman Lebrecht. In an effort to remain relevant--and solvent--European opera companies are being forced to radically overhaul everything from their repertoires to their management to their financial backing.

European governments have always heavily subsidized the arts. Berlin's operas receive as much as 80 percent of their total budget from the government; the Paris Opera receives 61 percent and London's Royal Opera House gets about 40 percent. (By contrast, the dazzlingly successful Metropolitan Opera in New York receives less than one half of 1 percent of its total budget from government grants; the rest comes from corporate sponsors, private donors and box-office sales.) But in recent years, Europe's subsidies have not kept pace with inflation, forcing some opera companies to raise ticket prices--or look to outside sponsors.

Neither is welcome. The ROH's ticket prices, which usually range from [pound]10 to [pound]120, are considerably higher than those on the Continent, prompting charges of elitism. "Not one more penny must go to the bunch of Toscas at the Royal Opera House," admonished the tabloid Sun, after Britain's National Lottery donated [pound]78.5 million in 1995. Yet many Europeans are wary of corporate donors, who they fear will unduly influence the arts they subsidize. Vilar, for instance, may be worshiped in America, where he recently donated $50 million to Washington's Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (one philanthropy expert called the move "gloriously wonderful" in The New York Times). But in Britain, The Times of London sniped that "his huge donations tend to go to institutions run by people whom he trusts to deliver opera and ballet the way he likes it: staid, starry and starchy."

It's tough to make everyone happy. In opera, high drama is as common behind-the-scenes as it is onstage. The Bastille in Paris quickly went through two maestros in its first five years, before finding a soulmate in American James Conlon (sidebar). Some speculate that Kaiser left his post at the ROH because of conflicts with the board of directors; Kaiser denies it, saying only that the position was "challenging." Jeremy Isaacs, who directed the ROH from 1987 to 1996, called it "an impossible job." Indeed, five administrators have left in as many years. The ROH searched high and low for a replacement for Kaiser before settling on Tony Hall, the current head of BBC News.

It doesn't help that many European cities have competing opera houses, which tend to dilute support. London's ROH has endured a rivalry, on and off, with the ...