Will Hall become opera's sacrificial lamb?
Tony Hall may be ready for a change of career, but what can he be thinking
of by taking up the poisoned chalice of the Royal Opera House?
Like all Pisceans (March 3 1951), Tony Hall can easily soak up
the mood of his surroundings, and as Birt's right-hand man he
mirrored the master. His dutiful, time-serving and bureaucratic
Capricorn Moon seems to have squashed his more theatrical and
imaginative Piscean talents, and his unsuccessful bid to become
BBC director-general has left him with nowhere further to go.
But Hall's horoscope shows an impressive, benevolent Jupiter
and if there's one thing Pisceans love, it's the feeling that by
making sacrifices, they can redeem a lost cause. Last April,
Hall's Jupiter moved into fiery Aries, putting fire in his belly
and a desire to blaze a new trail, so a career change looks
imminent.
The ROH, with its troubled history, is an ideal candidate for
redemption. Its modern incorporation (April 1 1950) makes it a
fiery Aries and its warlike tendency has repeatedly manifested in
internal strife. But it is also saddled with a tedious Moon-
Saturn conjunction in Virgo, bogging it down in red tape,
criticism and the constraints inherent in public funding. This
same Moon-Saturn factor dominates the horoscope of the BBC, and
Hall could find he has been through this dull managerial movie
before. The job has been split into two and Hall would get
administrative, not artistic, control. So despite the inspiring
Aries connections, Hall's Pisces opposite the RHO's Virgo Moon-
Saturn suggest that much of the joy and creativity will be
knocked out of the job.
There is not enough between the two horoscopes to make this a
glorious career climax. If Hall does persist, he needs to accept
the constraints and not imagine that he can quickly tame this
unruly beast, or else the Opera House Ram is sure to consume him.