ROYAL OPERA HOUSE HIRES ABT'S EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR.

NEW YORK CITY--The British press hasn't been complaining that the newly named executive director of the Royal Opera House, Royal Opera, and Royal Ballet is an American who has never lived in England. "Things are so serious, they're willing to try anything," says Michael Kaiser.

Kaiser, the forty-five-year-old New York native who will have administrative responsibility for the three Royal entities, has turned three financially troubled American dance companies around. The most recent is American Ballet Theatre, which he left November 8 after its fall season in New York City. He started work in London in mid-November.

First, he'll study where money is being spent and what the donor base is. He hopes by year's end to have formulated long-range plans. At press time Kaiser explained, "It's premature to state specific plans. I intend to cut way back on administrative expenses and put more money into art. I'll cut back the staff size. The staff is about 500. I'll be aggressive about how to market art and look at new fund-raising. I wouldn't go if I didn't think I had a chance of success.

"We'll be dedicating money to art and educational programming. They do quite a bit. They don't publicize it very well. There are a lot of marketing techniques to build public awareness for the organization and for the excitement of the work they're doing." The proposal that the Royal Opera and English National Opera merge is "over with," Kaiser says.

Any arts organization, even one deeply in debt, can return to success if it's producing good art, Kaiser believes. "It all starts from the art. ABT created a much larger public in New York by introducing a fall season at City Center. With its spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House, it has two pillars of the year. We marketed the principal dancers and made their names much more known to people. By selecting images carefully, we conveyed the excitement of dance in posters on buses and telephone kiosks. Revenues--ticket sales and contributions--have increased more than 60 percent in the last three years. That's attributed to the dancers dancing so well and [artistic director] Kevin [McKenzie] creating exciting programs that we've marketed well."

The Royal Opera House, Royal Opera, and Royal Ballet are more than $30 million in debt. "In terms of deficit, this is by far the largest I've had to deal with," Kaiser states. "The three U.S. companies I have run all had smaller deficits. But most of the money was owed to vendors instead of to banks, foundations, and the organization itself, as advances on government grants. Vendors like toe shoe manufacturers are not in the business of lending money. I spent time appeasing people who were owed money. The Royal companies are paying their bills on time."

But some patterns are similar, Kaiser notes. "When troubles happen, the conversation stops being about art and starts being about money. Donors and audiences lose interest in the art. You have even less money. Companies cut back on the amount of art they produce and the marketing. They get sicker and sicker.

"You don't solve money problems by talking about them. Few people give money to the arts because [the arts are] in trouble. They give money because they're excited by the work. You need a menu of projects you can excite different donors with--new works, education, design elements."

Both the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet have been touring and performing in other London theaters. "That has been financially infeasible," Kaiser says. "It will stop early in 1999, and the companies will be dormant until the renovated Royal Opera House reopens in December 1999." That means a year of no art being produced to talk about. "The advance artistic program will be planned and we'll make that the focus--what is going to happen--instead of what is happening that week. One does that anyway," Kaiser says. "At ABT we talked about the new Othello for more than a year before it happened. You can turn the attention to art, even if you're not producing art at the very moment. You can create anticipation. You have to."

Forty percent of the Royal companies' budgets is covered by government funding, Kaiser says. "It's not large, compared with continental Europe. They do have donors. There's a tax deduction for personal contributions in the United Kingdom. But the sophistication of fundraising is less than in the United States. The ways of thanking donors and giving them special experiences to encourage them to give more doesn't exist over there. It will in a little while."

Kaiser's job will be to regain government and public confidence in the Royal companies through strong management and to increase access to the work to more people than the 2,200 in the house each night. "Interest is there; accessibility has not been," Kaiser declares. He would like to have a large screen set up outside the opera house more often so anyone can see a live video of the production inside, free. "I'd like the BBC to do more broadcasts so the nation can see the art, not just people in London. Union members get paid a lot more during broadcasts; union negotiations are going on now. I'm part of it as an adviser."

At the Royal Ballet, Anthony Dowell chooses casts and repertory. The Royal Opera is looking for an artistic director. "It happened in the three dance companies I worked for that I developed a relationship with the person responsible for the artistic side," says Kaiser. "It's impossible not to talk about the art and the financial implications of it."

At ABT, where McKenzie develops programming, Kaiser says, "He and I talked about it because we're friends. We spent a lot of time on the educational side, a particular interest of mine. I encouraged him to come up with projects for the pipeline. Bigger projects are easier to fund than little ones. By larger I mean planned, thought through, with a point of view, for stars, festivals, specific works, designers.

"You try to strike a balance so it's comfortable for the artist and works financially. Part of my job is to see that we can afford the season that's planned and that the artist feels fulfilled. Sometimes projects they want can't be scheduled right away.

"One of the reasons I like to do turn-around work is that I like to put artists in a position where they can plan their work better and have better and more art."

Kaiser has previously been general manager of State Ballet of Missouri, executive director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Foundation, and, since July 1995, executive director of American Ballet Theatre. He first studied to be an operatic baritone, but he never sang professionally. While in Washington, D.C., where he founded Michael M. Kaiser Associates, specializing in helping large corporations form long-range plans, he joined the Washington Opera board. He realized that he'd rather be working in arts management. "The job I found was running a ballet company in Kansas City," he says. "That's how I got into dance. This job is perfect; it allows me to combine opera and dance."