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Ideas man: CEO Tony Hall in the Flora Hall at the Royal Opera House

Child’s play: the ROH is now part of the life of local youngsters in Thurrock, Essex, seen here making props

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Made in Thurrock” is the unexpected new mantra of the Royal Opera House. It's also part of the best-kept secret in the arts: a new, world-class ROH Production Park in Thames Gateway, part of Europe's largest regeneration scheme, which spans 40 miles and boasts 18 miles of riverside stretching along the Thames Estuary.

Not, to be accurate, that it's a secret. The ROH announced plans for this unglamorous urban area, part industrial, part greenbelt, at its last annual press conference. Those critics and journalists present viewed a short promotional film showing many enthusiastic children and locals old and young making props, wearing masks and mounting a show in the region. But with no twirling tutus or temperamental tenors in sight, it all seemed remote from the Covent Garden stage.

“Thurrock? Is that near Greenock?” muttered a colleague, content to leave it at that. Many ROH patrons might be similarly ignorant. Most famous for the Lakeside shopping centre, Thurrock is geographically in south Essex but administratively it spills into three government regions and incorporates Purfleet — the exact site of the ROH project — Tilbury, the RSPB's bird sanctuary at Rainham Marshes and the Dartford Crossing at the eastern rim of the M25. The new Eurostar streaks past with a loud whistle and container lorries rumble by. Two oil terminals and a slow march past of commercial ferries dominate the skyline.

How did the marriage between Covent Garden and Thurrock happen? “I was sitting on a train,” begins Tony Hall, 57, chief executive of the Royal Opera House since 2001 and a man known for having big, commercially savvy ideas. Since he commutes each day from his family home in Henley-on-Thames, he sits on a train for much of his life, so the 24-mile journey from Covent Garden to Thurrock is unlikely to faze him.

“We knew that our old production workshop in Bow was going to have to close because of a compulsory-purchase order to make way for the 2012 Olympics, so we had to find somewhere new. So there I was on a train, as it happened, with Andrea Stark, chief executive of East England Arts Council. I said, Look, we're stuck, can you think of a major site somewhere near east London?' She suggested Thurrock.”

The 14-acre ROH Production Park, which will be fully operational by 2010, includes restored Grade II-listed farm buildings, a dovecote and a historic walled garden, as well as a huge, yet to be built eco-friendly, grass-roofed hangar which will include workshops for scenery, carpentry, metalwork, paint works, fibre-glassing and similar.

Many of these workshops will run as small businesses, on hire for non-ROH activities. A National Skills Academy, open to anyone, will be housed on the site too, run independently of the ROH Production Park but with close links. The promotional literature describes a “hub” providing training, education, business and community spaces and “opportunities and access for the local area”. There's even talk of cream teas.

But how much will all this cost? According to the Thurrock and Thames Gateway Development Corporation, the entire ROH Production Park has an estimated capital budget of £55 million. The Production Workshop will cost around £7.5 million. The Royal Opera House has secured £5.5 million of this from a number of funders, both public and private.

Events have already taken place in the atrium at Lakeside and at the Tilbury Cruise Terminal under the genial and energetic leadership of Matt Lane, head of ROH Thurrock and Thames Gateway. More than 2,500 local teachers, students and families have attended the Hamlyn Performances of Onegin, Swan Lake and Tosca at Covent Garden itself, and 150 claimed student standby tickets for Wagner's Das Rheingold. Cynics may assume this is all merely yet another box-ticking exercise coming under the heading “education and outreach”. Hall chuckles at this gross misunderstanding. “Everything which happens at Thurrock — every single activity down to the last prop — will reflect back on to the stage of the Royal Opera House. This Production Park will be state of the art, a vital contributor to Covent Garden as well as an ever more important story in the lives of local people.”

This is an issue close to Hall's heart. This former head of BBC TV news, who narrowly missed the top job of BBC director general, is driven by a strong sense of public duty. In addition to his ROH role, he is chair of creative and cultural skills, which is behind the push for a National Skills Academy for backstage skills. As a child, he had a passion for that aspect of live performance.

“At school in Birkenhead I was always part of the stage crew for our drama productions — building sets, lighting, hauling pulleys up and down. I really enjoyed it and had a glimpse of how essential, and hard-won, these skills are,” he says.

Those who know Hall might add that it is typical of this Cheshire-born Oxford graduate that he would be backstage masterminding the action rather than taking the limelight out in front. So far he has overseen one of the most stable and financially secure periods in the company's recent turbulent history. His manner is calm, warm-humoured and animated. He has a sharp business brain and not an ounce of theatrical flamboyance.

“I find it both exciting and moving that so many people, who would never have expected to have any connection with the Royal Opera House, are finding it's part of their lives — from schoolchildren to college students, to adult learners to, in one project, six young offenders, two of whom are now on apprenticeship courses. We've lit a touchpaper, showing what can be done. That's worthwhile.”

On 14 March next year, for the first time ever, schoolchildren aged from nine to 11 will perform a new commission by Orlando Gough called On the Rim of the World, for one night only, on the main stage of the Royal Opera House. Every part of the stage design will be “Made in Thurrock”. “This is the first time the education department will have taken over the main stage, and with a world premiere,” Hall points out.

Given the scale of this ambitious, off-site undertaking, it is easy to forget that Hall is also running the most luxurious of performing arts venues while confronting a recession. But this urbane, trained economist — son of a Liverpool banker — looks unperturbed.

“The most important thing by a mile,” he insists, “is to keep the repertoire brilliant and sparkling, the performers world-class. In hard times, people need these things more than ever. There's no point doing La Bohème over and over again, or cancelling the expensive star names. That's part of our identity. My job in the next three years — or however long these hard times last — is to ensure we have a strong artistic team who will carry us through on a high.”

There is every certainty he will. He established the Big Screen and live cinema relays, initiated the triumphant Don Giovanni “access evening” for Sun readers and secured the controversial ROH purchase of Opus Arte, the quality DVD opera/ballet label. Digital downloads in your own home are next on Hall's agenda. His bold proposal to set up a Royal Opera House, Manchester — currently on hold pending a feasibility report and not envisaged until at least 2014 — has caused a furore, not least because no one was expecting it.

“I have a deep belief in the power of what we do at Covent Garden, both ballet and opera. Not everyone will be overwhelmed all of the time. Not everyone will want to come back. But all must have a chance to try it.”

This is a turning point in the Royal Opera House's history. The old habits and hierarchies that survived last century are crumbling. Thurrock, Manchester and cinema relays are part of that change. “It's an exciting time for us. I see a comparison with the quiet revolutions in our museums and art galleries a decade ago. Now, too, in our digital age, we can reach audiences in Buenos Aires, Shanghai and Mumbai.”

But for those who support the core activity — turning up for a live performance in the theatre — can he guarantee quality of the kind that justifies, at the top end, three-figure seat prices? “Of course, we'll have to look hard at how we spend money. There may be things we have to postpone. We have our supporters, private and corporate, and we must hope they'll stay with us.”

To his surprise, ticket sales so far are holding up well. “I say this cautiously but it seems that this November we're doing even better than we did this month last year. We'll have to see if that lasts.” He won't give any hints yet as to what the Royal Opera House is planning for the Cultural Olympiad, except that “it'll be even more and even better and with more ambition and even more stars than we do anyway”. That's quite some promise.
NORMAN LEBRECHT IS AWAY

 

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