When Dame Judy Mayhew takes over the reins of London’s Royal Opera House, she will have her work cut out for her. The head job at Covent Garden has always been a notoriously tricky one politically, and the ROH is not exactly flush with cash at the moment, either. Mayhew is upbeat about the future, but realistic about the short and long-term challenges that lie ahead of her: “The reality is that we have to find a way of squeezing another £1.4m out of next year’s Covent Garden budget, and we have to find ways of doing it without damaging the core product.”