Troubled Opera Australia brings in new boss

Opera Australia has appointed its first female chief executive, Sydney-born Fiona Allan. Currently chief executive of the Birmingham Hippodrome, Ms Allan has successfully steered the UK theatre through an 18-month pandemic lockdown that is only now beginning to lift.

Speaking on the phone from her West Midlands home, Ms Allan said she couldn’t wait to “roll up her sleeves” and start to navigate a return to stability for Australia’s flagship opera company.

“I particularly love the job I’m in now but I had to throw my hat in the ring for this opportunity. I was elated to be offered the job.”

Fiona Allan is excited to return to Sydney take the helm of Opera Australia.Credit: Pamela Raith

Ms Allan’s appointment comes after the current boss, Rory Jeffes, announced in February that he was stepping down after less than four years in the role.

Before leaving Australia in 2008, Ms Allan was chief executive of the Sydney Film Festival, had worked as a producer at the Sydney Opera House and was general manager of the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne.

‘In a war’: Artistic director Lyndon Terracini.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

“I think I will bring a whole variety of experience into the role,” she said. “I’ve worked for producing companies and I’ve also worked on the venue side. I’ve worked in Australia in chief executive roles. I’ve worked over here in chief executive roles and my background is classical music - that’s my first degree. I hope I’ll bring a new perspective and new energy.”

Ms Allan joins Opera Australia during the most difficult period of the 65-year-old company’s history. Pandemic lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne have wrought havoc with OA’s performance schedules and left it a financial basketcase.

Last year nearly 1000 performances were scratched and the company booked an operating loss of more than $7 million. It only avoided collapsing altogether with the sale in December of a warehouse in Alexandria that netted $46 million.

Prior to the Alexandria sale, OA sacked 56 staff members including 16 musicians, a move that sparked widespread condemnation and became a public relations disaster for the company.

Ms Allan said she was undaunted by the challenge the company faces, pointing to her experience with the Hippodrome, which has not been able to host live performances for 18 months.

“These are challenges I’ve come to terms with and I’ve found solutions for,” she said. “I wouldn’t have taken the job if I didn’t think I was going to have a good shot at making things more stable and better. I think the opera is in a good position to go into recovery.”

One of the innovative solutions Ms Allan found to bring some revenue in to her theatre was to remove all the seats in the auditorium and stage a digital exhibition Van Gough Alive. Operating under art gallery rather than theatre rules, the show brought in some 63,000 visitors.

When the latest round of lockdowns returned to Sydney, OA was forced to scrap the bulk of its winter season but was hanging on to the hope that the Andrew Lloyd Webber juggernaut Phantom of the Opera would still open on September 3 in Sydney and in Melbourne on November 14. However, both those seasons were scrapped last month, leaving $20 million in advance ticket sales up in the air.

At the time, artistic director Lyndon Terracini said it felt as if OA was “in a war”.

“Theatre is now on its knees,” he added. “There is no way forward.”

Terracini’s dramatic plea for federal government intervention appeared to fall on receptive ears when it was announced in late July that it would receive a $4 million handout from the COVID-19 Arts Sustainability Fund.

The final production remaining in OA’s calendar, a season of The Ring slated for Brisbane in October, is hanging by a thread. Management is desperately shopping around for a venue outside Sydney to stage rehearsals in a COVID-safe “bubble” but has yet to find anywhere, and with the window for rehearsals for Wagner’s epic work closing fast, doubts are growing over whether it will go ahead this year.

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