Opera chief leaves Sydney for £104m Cardiff Bay centre

In a significant coup for Wales, the Millennium Centre arts complex in Cardiff has recruited a key figure from the Sydney Opera House (SOH) to be its first chief executive.

Judith Isherwood, 42, director of performing arts and acting chief executive of the SOH, will take up her new role in Wales in March. The £104m centre is currently under construction and not due to open until November next year.

Although the appointment will be largely welcomed, it will also be seen as another sign of the lack of home-grown heavyweight arts administrators in the UK. Four of the country's leading arts venues are now being run by administrators from overseas.

The Millennium Centre, based in Cardiff Bay and largely funded by the Welsh Assembly and the Millennium Commission, with private funding, will open with a gala performance headed by the Welsh opera star Bryn Terfel.

A replacement for the doomed Welsh opera house project, the centre has suffered delays and controversy over rising costs. It will operate as a multi-purpose venue for theatre, opera and dance, and will be the permanent home of the Welsh National Opera.

Ms Isherwood has spent 20 years in arts administration and has a background in making resident arts organisations work alongside one another. She pledged that the centre would become the "heart and soul" of the arts community in Wales and become a focal point for touring productions from the West End and elsewhere. "I think it is one of the most exciting and ambitious developments I am aware of in the world,'' she said yesterday.

The new chief executive said she did not see the complex as merely an entertainment centre: "We want to combine work of artistic merit with populist work which is commercially successful. I think all the art forms sit nicely together; opera against dance, dance against traditional ballet, and I think that spread of that kind gives a balanced programme.'' But she made it clear that she was determined to make the place work financially. "There is no doubt that this business is about selling tickets," she said.

Ms Isherwood has been standing in at the SOH for Michael Lynch, its former chief executive, since he took over last year at the South Bank Centre in London. Other foreign administrators in the UK included Ross Stretton, who was artistic director of the Royal Ballet until his acrimonious departure last September. The American-born Anthony Pappano is musical director of the Royal Opera House while Spaniard Vincente Todoli heads the Tate Modern.