Christopher Hahn's promotion from artistic director to general director of the Pittsburgh Opera might appear to be a nod by its board in the direction of artistry, given that he's had tremendous success re-inventing the opera company's look and invigorating its casting since arriving here in 2000.

But Hahn and the board have a different take on his succeeding the business-minded Mark Weinstein. It was Hahn's ability to make difficult decisions with a limited artistic budget that helped secure the promotion, and it is his belief that a tightly run ship will allow for better productions that will be a bedrock of his leadership.

"We didn't ever get to the stage where someone said, 'No,' " says Hahn of running productions. "If the budget wasn't going to work with what I planned, it was my initiative to make it work in some different form. I was saying to myself, 'No, you can't do that.'"

But for board members and Pittsburgh foundations, Hahn will have to back up words with results, particularly with an example of artistry moving too far ahead of financial considerations still sitting in their collective memory: Tito Capobianco, the stage director who operated as head of the company in the 1990s, had artistic success but left the opera with a $1.7 million deficit in 1999 when Weinstein succeeded him.

"A brilliant artistic mind, but he couldn't pay his bills and marshal support to get out from under it," George White, an opera board member, says of Capobianco.

While passionate about opera, Weinstein was a business mind, through and through. He erased the deficit and raised the annual budget to $8 million, with Hahn reporting to him as artistic leader.

Having two -- three if you count the music director -- high-level leaders working together was a model that worked so well for the opera that a return to a single person understandably has been a concern. These are precarious times. With a poor economy and the company, like its counterpart the Pittsburgh Symphony, in the midst of a capital campaign, there is little margin for error in making budgets or fundraising.

Hahn gets the concern but wants all to understand that he is not a Capobianco retread.

"I am an artistic administrator, and have been a manager all of my life," Hahn says from his office in the new Pittsburgh Opera building in the Strip District. "The title of 'artistic' meant something different attached to me than to Tito, who was a practitioner and on stage six hours a day. I stopped stage directing when I took over the San Francisco Opera Center [in 1992]. The concern is an artist running the company may lead to complications. But they will discover very rapidly that I am part of a different mold."

"He has established a great standard," says Marc Scorca, president of the service organization Opera America. "In all his years he has understood that for every artistic destination, there is a financial side."

Hahn is convinced that having artistic decision-making lie with the same person who has the purse strings will make for a more cost-effective company. "Restructuring will take place within the company that will tighten communications, ensuring that the nuts and bolts come earlier rather than later," he says. "We should be about to think four to five years down the road now, and budget to that."

The single-leader model still dominates American opera companies and has proven to work best, according to Scorca. "One person must be making those choices. You need to have that skill at making those choices. Chris has been in leadership in opera for years, he has lived with the realities, he has adjusted his work for them."

Hahn has heeded the advice of board members and others that he needn't try to do it all. To that end, he plans on shifting some positions internally to assist him on financial matters, and he has posted two director positions of development and of marketing and communications.

"My judgment is that Christopher should complement himself with an absolute good No. 2," says White, one of Hahn's strongest supporters on the board. "Someone who can mind the checkbook [and] who has the self-confidence and moxie that he will challenge Christopher and keep [him] from following into the Tito model."

And in the realm of fundraising, a duty that will take up much more of Hahn's time, Scorca believes calling the shots on the bottom line as well as under the proscenium arch will be a decided positive.

"By putting the art front and center, it is about the art and vision," he says. "One person can articulate that. It isn't just about making money; it is ... moving an organization forward in an artistically vibrant way."