Opera Australia posts $4.9m loss, as shift to musicals draws audiences

Increasing costs and an ambitious production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle have contributed to an operating loss of $4.9m for Opera Australia in 2023.

OA chief executive Fiona Allan has pinned much of the loss on the cost of mounting Wagner’s monumental 16-hour, four-part work in Brisbane which had been twice delayed because of the pandemic.

However, she firmly denied the suggestion The Ring had been a financial disaster, instead declaring it an “artistic triumph”.

Last year’s production of The Ring in Brisbane weighed heavily on Opera Australia’s balance sheet.Credit: Wallis Media

“I think it is one of the best collaborations I have been involved in in my career,” she said. “It was something we really had to see through.”

Allan pointed to the big increase in the production costs, some of which had risen 70 per cent post-pandemic. She said increased costs were everywhere from the price of materials, such as steel, to the costs of shipping sets to Australia for international co-productions.

The well-documented change in post-pandemic audience behaviour, with overall numbers down and an unwillingness to commit early to ticket-buying, also weighed on OA’s result.

The loss contrasts with a $1.75m surplus for the previous year, although the 2021 result was substantially affected by a NSW government bailout package of nearly $10m.

Allan and new artistic director Jo Davies have already made it clear they will focus more on Australian talent, contrasting with the steady flow of big overseas names under previous artistic director Lyndon Terracini.

Allan said this switch to homegrown artists would also help reduce costs.

“Some of these problems [with costs] we’ll be able to manage because we have an ambition that’s different from before,” she said. “We don’t want to bring in entire creative teams from another country.

“We want to be creating more work for Australian teams and artists. When we’re bringing in people internationally we want to be welcoming back amazing Australian artists like Jessica Pratt who are doing so well internationally and need to feel Opera Australia is one of their home companies.”

Miss Saigon was one of two musicals stage in 2023.Credit: Daniel Boud

Last year, OA produced two musicals: Miss Saigon in Sydney and Melbourne and The Phantom of the Opera in Melbourne only. Combined, the two productions drew more than 240,000 attendees, nearly half of the entire 2023 audience - underscoring the importance of musical theatre to the company’s financial stability. In contrast, the entire Ring Cycle in Brisbane drew 19,000 attendees.

“We will maintain the kind of commitment we have [to musicals] at the moment, which is to do two a year,” said Allan. “We’re proud of the fact that we do musicals and that we have a huge audience that come to musicals. There are loads of people whose very first experience of performing arts on an epic scale is seeing a musical. It would be great if, over time, we can develop better ways of introducing people who come to Phantom to something that’s more akin to what we call opera.”

In Melbourne, OA is about to enter a tough period with the closure until 2027 of the State Theatre.

Allan said they were trying to see the “silver linings” of the closure and had been looking at a number of options, including regional touring and the “great experiment” of using Margaret Court Arena for a production of Tosca from May 24.

“Perhaps there is the opportunity for audience growth over the next few years by taking opera to different spaces,” she said. “It’s hard to juggle but it’s out of our control that we don’t have the State Theatre.”

Allan was speaking shortly after the announcement she will chair the board of Sydney’s Hayes Theatre, the small independent theatre that specialised in musicals and cabaret.

“We need more Hayes to support the creativity of this city,” she said. “I love the team there and I love their ambition. I think what they have achieved over 10 years is absolutely remarkable.”

Allan said she would keep her role at Hayes and at OA separate and that there is no “formal relationship” between the two.

“But, yeah, we look with an interest at any new musicals.”

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