Technology can also be used to broaden the potential audience for an artistic
event. This can occasionally have uncomfortable public relations consequences,
as Jeremy Isaacs discovered when he tried to open up Covent
Garden’s opera performances to national television audiences in the late 1980s.
His struggles with the highly unionized workforce were operatic in themselves,
but have led to a realization of the genuinely popularizing potential of
the medium. Tony Hall, a later chief executive of the Royal Opera House who
shares Isaacs’ background in broadcasting, pointed out to a UK national newspaper
that ‘the first night of Rigoletto this season was seen by 2200 people
in the house, 3000 in the Piazza and 900 000 on BBC2’ (BBC News Online, 2002).
Hall’s visions for Covent Garden include extending the big-screen perfor-
mances which have made such an impact in the Piazza outside the Opera
House into other open-air venues, and even live relays via a nationwide chain
of cinemas. ‘We have to stand for excellence on the main stage and at the same
time get that excellence to as many people as we can. I have spent a lot of time
working on how we can improve on that. Partly it’s about price, but it’s also
about developing our partnership with the BBC’ (BBC News Online, 2002).