Opera Australia Funding Crippling Company’s Activities

Opera Australia posts its second annual deficit. The company’s chief executive says Victorians were “not getting the opera they deserved. He said the company could not afford to service Melbourne as it would like unless the Victorian Government increased its contribution. ‘The funding level of the company is too little to do all the activities that are asked of the company and the cost of staging opera in Melbourne had been seriously underestimated when the formula was drawn up in 2000. As a result, Victorians were now seeing fewer productions.”