Tony Hall has been running London’s Royal Opera House for a couple years now. “There might have been a time when running an opera house presented unique opportunities for leisurely lunching, schmoozing with business grandees desperate for a favourite seat in the orchestra stalls, perhaps the odd feisty exchange with the prima assoluta of the day. But that was then and this is now, and Hall is the epitome of the modern manager: brisk, fast-talking, affable and relentlessly upbeat.”