" Hanging on by our fingernails without a safety net " .sx Nicholas Kenyon looks at the state of London's two opera houses in the wake of five important resignations last week .sx IN THE high-risk world of opera , to lose a star singer may be regarded as a misfortune ; to lose - as have the two London opera houses in the course of a single week - a chairman , a principal conductor , a music director and a director of productions , suggests not so much carelessness as crisis .sx Is large-scale opera now as financially implausible as London Zoo ?sx Will the fat cats be sold off to Europe , productions junked for firewood , and the opera houses reduced to empty listed buildings ?sx It all depends how you present your state of change .sx The English National Opera , confirming Peter Jonas's daring leap into the jaws of conservative Munich , and announcing that both music director Mark Elder and productions director David Poutney would follow him out of the Coliseum at the same time , did it positively , and with a firm declaration that this was the strongest possible artistic decision for the company to take .sx Their rosy picture can be disputed .sx Attendances in this largely twentieth-century season are down to 72 per cent , creating an pounds800 .sx 000 deficit which will have to be clawed back next season :sx October at the Coliseum will be nothing but Boh e-grave me and Mikado .sx Criticism of the ingrained house style of some ENO productions is growing , and there is an imminent danger of stagnation :sx was the team right to quit while it was still ahead ?sx Jonas said that was " a rather malignant way to look at it .sx I'm happy here at the moment .sx I'm so happy I could weep .sx But that means it's the time to think about moving on .sx " Demob happy , he admitted :sx " There have been many times when I've just wanted to be totally sick and disappear in the stalls and just thought 'Oh my God , how did we get entangled in this co-production of a new work' and thought it was a dreadful mistake .sx " .sx ENO has walked the tight-rope of adventure , " hanging on by our fingernails without any netting underneath " , as Jonas puts it ; but by linking its wild imagination to a strong decision-making structure , it has kept the public and the funders on its side .sx Jonas says that mistakes have been coped with " by skating over some of them with a bit of adept PR , or using our marking and our image well , and relying on our good reputation " .sx He can admit all this cheerfully because his tenure is perceived as an overwhelming success that has changed opera in this country forever .sx If there is weeping for joy at the Coliseum , the gnashing of teeth is more likely to be heard down the road at Covent Garden .sx The House has still to announce its future plans later this month , but the contrastingly random , uncoordinated resignations last week of chairman Lord Sainsbury as well as Jeffrey Tate as principal conductor have added fuel to the fire of those who claim that the Royal Opera's artistic direction is unsure and its structure diffuse .sx It faces continual criticism form the press , critics , and - the latest indignity - the sponsors themselves , particularly damaging at a time when shortfall of pounds2 million in budgeted sponsorship is the root cause of its present deficit .sx Lord Sainsbury's departing whinges about the failure of the Arts Council to ensure special treatment for the Royal Opera were offensive to the underfunded arts community throughout the country , particularly since he has greater ease of access than anyone to argue his case at the highest levels of government .sx But they are especially ironic at a time when the Arts Council has actually produced some significant increases in subsidy in partnership with other funders :sx a new pounds2 .sx 6m grant for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican , and a virtual doubling of the London Symphony Orchestra's grant to pounds2m , both thanks to matching funds from the City Corporation .sx Both these modest windfalls have been contingent on highly positive recent appraisals of the organisations' work by the Arts Council .sx It is six years since Clive Priestley looked at Covent Garden .sx Next week the council will announce its new appraisal team to examine the workings of the Royal Opera over the next few months :sx Hans Landesmann of the Salzburg Festival , Baroness Warnock , the composer Nigel Osborne , and Brian Ivory , the deputy director of the Scottish Arts Council , who is managing director of Highland Distilleries .sx At least this last appointment may give some comfort to the beleaguered Glaswegian general director at Covent Garden , Jeremy Isaacs .sx With the urban and civilised Angus Stirling of the National Trust as chairman in place of Sainsbury , Isaacs may find himself on a longer leash to accomplish those changes he feels are necessary .sx Last Tuesday afternoon he outlined to his Opera Board a new plan for the future , including speculation on a post-Bernard Haitink music directorship that included the names of Abbado and Muti , as well as the possibility of younger names to cover the long-delayed and still doubtful closure of the house , now put back to at least 1996 .sx But this formulation of policy comes against a background of uncertainty and poor morale - fuelled by the mishandling of recent redundancies - described by insiders last week as " absolutely appalling " .sx Isaacs argues the deficit will be cut by " hard graft " , reducing rehearsal time for this autumn's Ring cycle while inserting 10 performances of Rigoletto ( " I confess to you that we probably overrehearse " ) , pushing forward redundancies in chorus and orchestra with a plan to make 65 house retirement age ( " some of them are past their sell-by date " ) .sx More controversially , Isaacs is taking himself the formulation of operatic policy .sx I asked him if he saw his role as that of artistic director of the opera company :sx " Yes it is , of course .sx I'll qualify that because I don't want to be in any way offensive to Paul Findlay , the opera director , who does an infinity of work I could never contemplate .sx But I am the ultimate arbiter of a group of colleagues , some of whom meet regularly and some irregularly .sx " He believes in giving them freedom of action :sx " Accountability is the enemy of responsibility .sx If you really want people to be responsible , don't keep asking them to account for themselves .sx I sometimes feel that about my own job in relation to the board .sx " .sx At a press conference later this month , Isaacs will say that alongside the use of the finest singers and conductors " we are progressing rather more slowly than I would like towards the adoption of less naturalistic , more imaginative production styles .sx I saw Achim Freyer's Iphig e nie in Amsterdam the other day , and that had more good visual ideas in the first 10 minutes than I've seen in this house for a year .sx " This approach may cause difficulties , both with conductors and with director of production John Cox .sx One strongly expressed view from the outside is that the only way forward is for Isaacs to leave opera to the experts and retrench to the vital position of chief executive , bringing in a new vigorous opera director to forge a detailed policy with a committed new music director .sx Rupert Christiansen went to Chicago to hear Luciano Pavarotti tackle Otello and the mid-life crisis .sx The bigger you are , the harder it is .sx " HE'S VERY up at the moment " , claimed Irene Jones , president of the Luciano Pavarotti Appreciation Society .sx But in Chicago last Monday nobody could be so sure :sx big Lucy , the great Italian tenor of his generation , was meeting the biggest challenge of his career , as he attempted for the first time the epic title-role in Verdi's Otello .sx Disaster loomed .sx For days before the performance , Pavarotti had been winding himself into a frenzy of nervous tension .sx " He's been in a pretty vile mood , " confided a Decca executive , anxiously preparing for a 'live' recording , to be released in the autumn .sx A few years ago he was cancelling performances on the grounds of an allergy to stage dust ; now he's gone weak at the knees - not with rapture , but with a condition variously described as gout , arthritis , and 'excess tonnage' , which makes standing still physical agony .sx Add to this a week in and out of bed with a feverish cough , and you have one very volatile superstar .sx His panic was not irrational .sx For an Italian Tenor , Otello is the big one , demanding a voice which can scale down for subtlety , blast open with passion and cruise everywhere in between .sx " You never know where the booby-traps lie , " Pavarotti says .sx " I will never be confident about this part .sx " In other words , it's a killer and the list of Pavarotti's predecessors - Caruso , Gigli , Bjoerling , Bergonzi - who never braved it is longer than the list of those who have .sx For the past 15 years , the role has been monopolised by Placido Domingo , but invasion of his rival's territory was not the reason Pavarotti risked his throat .sx He is a cautious man .sx He has only sung the aria for which he is World-Cup famous , 'Nessun dorma' , once on stage in costume :sx the rest of Turandot is too heavy for him .sx Nor does he enjoy the arduous process of learning complex new works , since he relies more on his instincts than his intellect .sx " You have to grab him by the hand and sit him down , " as one colleague put it .sx " He's not a great reader of scores .sx " .sx But Pavarotti is 55 , and deep into the mid-life crisis which so many great singers are forced to confront .sx It is caused by the knotting up of what people expect of you , what you want to give them , and what your voice allows you to deliver .sx This year marks Pavarotti's thirtieth year as a professional singer ; he can't go on trotting out 'Nessun dorma' for ever and to keep up this status , he has to prove he has some extra mileage in his vocal tank .sx Domingo has found conducting a useful second string , but this option is not open to Pavarotti .sx Apart from the physical problems , his technical knowledge of music is said to be embarrassingly small .sx He tried producing in Venice in 1988 , with Donizetti's La favorita , but was discouraged by backstage sabotage on the first night :sx the hero's defiantly flourished sword flopped like old rhubarb , reducing the audience to hysterics .sx Why should Chicago be more generous ?sx It is a city where his image has been badly dented :sx in 1989 , Ardis Krainik , director of the Lyric Opera , publicly 'sacked' him in perpetuity for reneging on 25 out of 41 scheduled performances .sx " She and I can live with great pleasure without each other , " Pavarotti says and as if to prove the point , he returned to sing Otello down the road in Orchestra Hall , home of the Chicago Symphonic Orchestra .sx Through the agency of Ray Minshull , doyen of Decca's recording producers and a man Pavarotti describes as " one of my two best friends " , a plush package was assembled .sx After 22 years as music director of the Chicago Symphony , Sir Georg Solti was in search of a blockbuster on which to bow out ; Kiri Te Kanawa and Leo Nucci were free to sing Desdemona and Iago .sx From Pavarotti's point of view , probably the most attractive feature was the opportunity to sing such a demanding role in concert , without the additional strain of blacking up and struggling into costume .sx He also wanted to know whether the critics , about whom he is surprisingly sensitive , would approve .sx Telling the world that he would " never be confident about this part " was a way of hedging his bets .sx Six months of preparation followed , during which he was drilled by his repetiteur , Leone Magiera , and inspired by some long telephone conversation with Solti .sx But as Monday's packed house watched Pavarotti pull himself painfully on to the platform , the odds on success looked long .sx Slumping down on to a padded throne , raised several degrees above the level of the other soloists , he looked like an oriental potentate with a headache .sx Beside him was a table crammed with refreshments and medicaments .sx