Opera Australia artistic director Jo Davies quits only 10 months into the job as quick replacement sought

Opera Australia artistic director Jo Davies has sensationally left the national company over ‘differences of opinion’, less than a year into her contract.

‘Difference of opinion’: Opera Australia artistic director Jo Davies has left the company. Picture: Daniel Boud

Opera Australia will conduct a fast-tracked process to replace ­artistic director Jo Davies after she quit following a decision by the board and senior management to back a different strategy on artistic, audience and commercial outcomes.

Chairman Rod Sims said there would be a “truncated” search for a new artistic leader, as Davies said she was “incredibly sad” and the development was “pretty ­devastating”.

The announcement on Friday was the latest in a string of departures of female leaders at high-profile Australian arts companies and comes after OA ­posted a multi-million-dollar ­operating loss in May.

Davies, the first female artistic director in the company’s 68-year history, parted ways with OA, ­effective immediately.

“It’s a big day, I’m just feeling incredibly sad about it. It’s pretty devastating,’’ she told The Weekend Australian. The country’s largest arts company said the ­departure was agreed mutually and that it followed differences of opinion about how OA should s balance artistic innovation, audience development and commercial imperatives.

Mr Sims said it was “extremely unfortunate” that the organisation had lost its artistic leader but denied speculation it was ­because of differences between Davies and chief executive Fiona Allan. Davies denied the pair were in mediation. He said the board and senior management had a view about OA’s future “and Jo had another view”.

He said OA had always ­attracted older audiences and that growing the base of the ­organisation was complex.

OA revealed on Friday that, since July, it had been conducting an independent review of artistic management and planning processes, which would inform decisions regarding future artistic management and roles.

Davies, a Cardiff-born opera and musicals director, in November 2023 replaced Lyndon Terracini, who left the company after 13 years at the helm. Davies’s appointment had been lauded as an “overdue cultural change”, and she spoke publicly about the need to redress what she called a historic gender imbalance at OA.

Queensland Ballet's artistic director Leanne Benjamin, centre, has also quit.

The OA chief, who trained at the Royal National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company and worked for two decades on Broadway, the West End and with international opera companies, also promised a focus on Australian-made works.

Her maiden program, curated with creative director Lindy Hume, boasted four new local ­operas: Jonathan Mills’ Eucalyptus, Gilgamesh by Jack Symonds, Brett Dean’s Hamlet, and the oratorio Watershed: The Death of Doctor Duncan, by Joseph Twist.

The line-up was a shift from Terracini’s tenure, which had been notable for its preference for international ­artists and production teams. Mr Sims applauded Davies for her ­vision, which included staging a version of Tosca on a tennis court at Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne. “I thank Jo for her significant contribution to the artistic future of Opera Australia,” he said. Her domestic focus had “demonstrated huge commitment to the next generation of Australian talent”.

Davies’s departure comes days after Melbourne Symphony Orchestra managing director Sophie Galaise left that organisation following a fallout after cancelling a performance by pianist Jayson Gillham who had made on-stage comments about the war in Gaza. The Weekend Australian had revealed board concern over her decision to travel to Singapore amid the crisis.

Queensland Ballet artistic ­director Leanne Benjamin three weeks ago left her position after six months, citing funding constraints. Queensland Theatre Company artistic director Lee Lewis, one of the country’s most revered theatremakers, quit in March, four years into a contract.

This month, internationally renowned British ­Adelaide Festival director Ruth Mackenzie quit after just two years in the role to take up a position with the South Australian government. And in June the Australian Ballet’s executive ­director, Lissa Twomey, departed the company 19 months into her contract.

The beginning of Davies’s OA tenure in November 2023 coincided with the staging of Wagner’s epic four-day, 16-hour The Ring cycle — the most expensive production in the company’s history — at Brisbane’s Queensland Performing Arts Centre.

Davies, who has also directed theatre and musical theatre, and her chief executive Fiona Allan anticipated backlash from purists with an apparent reliance on bottom-line-bolstering musical theatre, programming classics West Side Story, staged on Sydney Harbour earlier this year, and Sunset Boulevard, opening in Sydney tomorrow night. Opera Australia’s 2025 season will feature Tony award-winning musicals Hadestown and Guys & Dolls.

Last year Allan trumpeted the company’s double-staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera in 2022 (on Sydney Harbour and at the Opera House) as a budgetary triumph in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

Opera Australia is yet to release its 2025 program in full, but has confirmed Massenet’s Cinderella (Cendrillon), showing this year at the Met, and a return season of Sarah Giles’s La Traviata.

Said Davies in a statement: “I am proud of the artistic excellence and success of the work we have been able to achieve in my tenure and enormously grateful to the amazing audiences, patrons, artists, and colleagues who have made my time as Artistic Director so rewarding. I look forward to building new creative relationships with audiences and

artists here in Australia.”