Phantom of the Opera returns to Sydney Harbour amid Opera Australia woes
The season will kick off the beloved Andrew Lloyd Webber musical's 40th anniversary year in March and promises a lucrative box office – the 2022 Handa Opera on the Harbour season sold 61,580 tickets, despite being dogged by wild rain and unpredictable weather, narrowly missing the record 65,000 tickets sold to West Side Story in 2019.
It comes at a crucial time for the national opera company, which posted a $10 million operating deficit this year, following disappointing returns for its 2024 production of Sunset Boulevard.
Opera Australia chair Rod Sims said that when the results were released in May, the company was committed to 'better programming', trimming procurement costs and 'taking a stronger look at musicals'.
'We'll need to be sure of their financial success, and if we can't be, we just won't do them [musicals]. We won't be taking the sort of risks we took with Sunset Boulevard, so that won't happen again,' he said.
However, the return of the Simon Phillips-directed production of Phantom of the Opera is a surefire winner – at the time of its premiere season, Herald critic Lenny Ann Low gave it four stars.
'Watching this fantastical, old-school stage spectacle outdoors, with a backdrop of twinkling planes, bats soaring overhead and the reflections in the harbour of glowing skyscrapers, is simply glorious,' she wrote.
'Director Simon Phillips and conductor Guy Simpson have charged Andrew Lloyd Webber's best-known work with a thrilling force that merges grandeur, nuance and old-fashioned fun.'
She said: 'Georgina Hopson shines as Christine Daaé' while Joshua Robson as the Phantom brought 'lusty fury and sinewy heartbreak to the role'.
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