Michael Kaiser’s Opera House of horrors

Many Londoners will be bemused to hear that Michael Kaiser, the American arts administrator who from 1998 to 2000 famously oversaw the Royal Opera House in London – a dark period characterised by bad press, technical problems and bitchy in-fighting – has produced a book on how to rescue floundering arts organisations called The Art of the Turnaround. One of his ten golden rules is: "There must be only one spokesman and the message must be positive."

To be fair to Kaiser, who now runs the Kennedy Centre for the performing arts in Washington DC, he was eventually credited with a partial turn-around of Covent Garden and eight years on it is in healthy financial shape. But at the time, it was a nightmare and in June 2000 he resigned, citing personal reasons.

Today he remembers how "an entire cadre of newspaper reporters made a career of writing of the woes of the Opera House. Many of them camped out in pubs across the street to make sure they heard the latest gossip." Kaiser's morale was not helped by receiving an album of letters from schoolchildren entitled Why We Hate the Royal Opera House, including one which began: "Dear Mr Kaiser, we wish you were dead."

"I learned that I do not have a thick skin," says Kaiser. "I would go home and have a good cry. Then I would go to sleep, get up in the morning and do it all over again."

Another point when he almost gave up was when he accidentally knocked a cyclist off their bike while opening a taxi door. He was on his way to meet Princess Margaret at the Royal Ballet School. He worried he would be arrested and "put away for my carelessness. I spent the weekend in my flat absolutely miserable and questioned whether or not I should fly back to New York. The gloom and fear were palpable and I never fully lost them during my entire stay in England."

One Government member who might have offered him some encouragement was Peter Mandelson. Not a bit of it. The then Industry Secretary "sat down in my office" and said simply, "I hope you don't fuck this up". ·