ROH Chief Ousted

The carnage in Covent Garden continued last night when Royal Opera House chief executive Mary Allen was forced to resign. Allen, the third in a quick succession of chief executives, only joined last year; her immediate predecessor Genista McIntosh left the job after only five months saying it was too stressful.

Allen resisted pressure to resign at the end of 1997 following a scathing report from a Parliamentary Select Committee. Both Allen and then chairman Lord Chadlington were heavily criticised for bringing the ROH to the brink of financial ruin as well as for the allegedly unscrupulous manner of her appointment. Allen was poached from the Arts Council, responsible for funding a large bulk of the ROH's £214m renovation of its Covent Garden home.

The ROH has said that Allen's resignation now was caused by 'a growing difference of views over the future plans for the organisation.' At a board meeting yesterday, new chairman Sir Colin Southgate, of the EMI Group, told Allen that the ROH needed an artistic director not an arts administrator. The board was apparently shaken by the recent loss of musical director Nicholas Payne to the English National Opera and believed that the ROH needed to regain artistic credibility.

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