Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in the The Arts Centre in Melbourne (where it is accompanied by Orchestra Victoria). In 2004, the company gave 226 performances in its subscription seasons in Sydney and Melbourne, attended by more than 294,000 people.
Like most opera companies, it is funded by a combination of government money, corporate sponsorship, private philanthropy, and ticket sales. The proportion of its revenue from ticket sales is considerably higher than that of most companies, approximately 75 per cent. The company is perhaps best known internationally for its association with Dame Joan Sutherland, and for Baz Luhrmann's production of Puccini's La bohème in the early 1990s.
By the end of 2004, Opera Australia provided employment to approximately 1,300 Australians. OzOpera (Opera Australia's education, access and development arm) presented the La bohème production in Victoria, Northern Territory and Western Australia, attended by 13,350 people, while OzOpera's Schools Company performed to over 63,500 primary age children in more than 360 performances in urban and regional New South Wales and Victoria. Many thousands of Australians also experienced the work of their national opera company through television, radio, video, compact disc, DVD, and the annual free performance of opera in the Domain in Sydney.
Read more about Opera Australia: Australian Opera Company, 1956–57, Elizabethan Theatre Trust Opera Company, 1957–70, The Australian Opera, 1970–96, Opera Australia, Since 1996
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—Alex Atkinson, British humor writer. repr. In Present Laughter, ed. Alan Coren (1982)