Model of cultural policy and the governance and management of cultural institutions: comparative analysis of three European opera houses

ABSTRACT

Comparative research on cultural policies has advanced in recent decades in specifying the differences between cultural management models. However, less attention has been paid to how ways of managing large cultural institutions shape outcomes. Opera houses are a special case here. That is because they are large institutions with a long history and exhibit socio-institutional inertia, which partly explains the similarities between them regardless of their geographical and political context. However, there are also significant differences in governance modes, management and leadership styles, as well as how they respond to one of the great challenges facing opera houses in the twenty-first Century, namely social inclusion and gender inequality. This paper compares three great opera houses (Royal Opera House, Opera National de Paris, Royal Swedish Opera) belonging to different European models to assess the significance of these differences in cultural management models.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural policy model
• cultural institutions
• arts management
• opera
• Europe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Apart from the President and the three independent Board Members, the rest of the Board are drawn from the Ministry of Culture (four representatives) and the Ministry for the Economy (three representatives), staff representative, the Controller-General, and the Honorary Presidents (Opéra National de Paris, 2019).

2 The soprano Chloé Briot filed a case for sexual harassment. The events occurred between October 2019 and February 2020 during performances of “L’inondation” by Joël Pommerat, and took place at l’Opéra-Comique de Paris, and at the Rennes and Nantes opera houses.

3 We are aware that the cases studied in this paper neither cover the whole range of cultural policy found in Europe, nor all Opera House models. Some countries that play a key role in the opera tradition – Germany, Austria, and Italy are absent. Yet this paper’s goal is not to cover all models of cultural policy and opera house management, but rather to ascertain whether policy shapes management.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología: [Grant Number RTI2018-096299-B-I00].