The August 2021 press release announcing the appointment of “eminent international performing arts leader” Fiona Allan as Opera Australia’s (OA) new CEO bristled with the sense of a coup. Wooed from the UK after a “stellar” 17-year career, she would lead the Opera as it recovered from “the devastating impacts” of COVID-19. In fact, she’d lead the whole sector’s recovery given OA was “the nation’s largest and most significant performing arts company,” as its chair David Mortimer said in the release.

It’s a truism that the best time to take anything over is its lowest ebb. Within months, OA would declare its worst ever operating deficit for 2021, its very survival during the pandemic underpinned by almost $60 million from the sale of its Alexandria warehouse and COVID-related government support. Allan was also returning not only to a top performing arts job, but one that offered the prospect of a career-defining challenge: reimagining for 21st-century Australia the country’s flagship performing arts company, one that dealt in an art form that had peaked in the 19th century.