A decent seat at Opera Australia costs between $150 and $400 these days. For a single performance. I hear the complaints constantly: “Opera is only for rich people.” “Why is it so expensive?”

Fair questions. Let me show you where that money actually goes, because the economics of opera are more complex than most people realize.

The Simple Math Doesn’t Work

Opera is financially impossible. That’s not an exaggeration. The basic model doesn’t add up.

You need an orchestra of 50-80 musicians. A chorus of 30-50 singers. Principal singers. A conductor. Production crew. Costume makers. Set designers. Stage managers. Lighting technicians. Supertitle operators.

You’re paying all these people for weeks of rehearsal plus every performance. And unlike a rock concert, you can’t scale it up. The Sydney Opera House fits about 1,500 people in the Joan Sutherland Theatre. That’s your revenue ceiling.

A major new production can cost $2-4 million. You’ll perform it maybe eight times. Quick math: even if you sold every seat at $400 (you won’t), you’d make $4.8 million across all performances. The production is already underwater before you account for ongoing operational costs.

Where the Money Actually Goes

Let me break down a typical production budget:

Artistic Fees: 35-40% This covers principal singers, conductor, director, designers. International soloists command $15,000-50,000 per production depending on their prominence. Your conductor for a major work? Another $40,000-80,000.

Orchestra and Chorus: 25-30% These are mostly salaried positions, but orchestra costs for opera are substantial. Musicians are rehearsing for three weeks before opening night, then playing every performance.

Production Costs: 20-25% Sets, costumes, props, lighting equipment. A historically accurate costume can cost $5,000-15,000. Multiply that by 100+ costumes for a large production.

Venue and Operations: 10-15% Theatre rental, front-of-house staff, box office operations, marketing, administration.

This is why Opera Australia’s annual budget runs over $70 million. And ticket sales cover only about 40-50% of that.

The Subsidy Reality

Every major opera company in the world loses money on operations. They survive on three revenue streams: ticket sales, philanthropy, and government subsidy.

Opera Australia receives about $15-18 million annually in government funding. That sounds like a lot until you realize it represents roughly 20-25% of their operating budget.

Without it, ticket prices would need to double or triple to break even. At $800 for a mid-range seat, you’d have no audience.

Some people argue opera shouldn’t be subsidized at all. Let the market decide, they say.

Fine. That means no opera. The market already decided that opera can’t sustain itself on ticket sales alone. That’s true in Sydney, New York, London, Berlin, everywhere.

The question isn’t whether to subsidize opera. It’s whether we value having it as part of our cultural landscape.

Why Costs Keep Rising

Opera faces the Baumol cost disease. This is an economics concept that explains why labor-intensive industries with limited productivity growth see costs rise faster than inflation.

You can’t make opera more efficiently. You can’t cut corners on an orchestra. You need the same number of musicians playing Verdi now as you did in 1851.

Meanwhile, wages (appropriately) rise over time. Health insurance costs increase. Venue rental goes up. Materials cost more.

Technology hasn’t made opera cheaper. It’s made it more expensive. We now have sophisticated lighting systems, high-resolution projection, complex automation. These improve the production quality but they don’t reduce costs.

The Revival Model

Most companies now rotate between expensive new productions and cheaper revivals of existing productions. Opera Australia might premiere a new La Traviata in 2026, then revive it in 2028, 2031, and 2034.

That spreads the initial production cost across multiple seasons. It’s why you see the same productions returning. Not because they’re lazy, but because it’s the only financially viable model.

What About Cheaper Tickets?

Opera companies actually do offer cheaper tickets. Opera Australia has $65 seats for under-30s. Rush tickets. Livestreams. Family performances with reduced pricing.

The problem is that cheap seats don’t solve the fundamental economics. If you fill the house with $65 tickets, you’ve made $97,500. Your costs for that single performance are probably $150,000-200,000.

The math requires some full-price tickets to subsidize the discounted ones.

The Comparison to Other Art Forms

People don’t blink at spending $300 for decent concert tickets when Taylor Swift comes to town. A night at a top restaurant costs $200-300 per person. Footy finals tickets go for $150-400.

Opera isn’t uniquely expensive for live entertainment. It’s just expensive compared to streaming Netflix on your couch.

The difference is that opera doesn’t have the massive economies of scale that recorded music or film have. Every performance is bespoke. You’re paying for the full cost of live production.

Could It Be Different?

Some experimental companies are trying alternative models. Smaller venues, chamber orchestras, minimalist staging. These can reduce costs significantly.

But they also change what opera is. There’s artistic value in the full-scale experience. In seeing Aida with an 80-piece orchestra and a cast of hundreds on the opera house stage.

The question becomes: do we want both? The full-scale productions and the experimental smaller works?

That requires continued subsidy and ticket revenue that reflects actual costs.

The Honest Truth

If you can’t afford opera tickets right now, that’s a legitimate barrier. I’m not dismissing that.

But the solution isn’t to get angry at opera companies for charging what they charge. They’re already operating at a loss. Ticket prices reflect a fraction of the real cost.

The solution is better public subsidy and philanthropy so that more affordable tickets can exist. It’s lobby your government for arts funding. It’s support free live-streaming of performances. It’s defend the value of art that can’t sustain itself on market economics alone.

Opera is expensive because it takes hundreds of highly skilled people months of work to create a few performances of something inherently unprofitable.

That’s not a bug. It’s the reality of making labour-intensive art in a capitalist economy.

We can decide it’s worth supporting anyway. Or we can decide it isn’t.

But we should at least be honest about what we’re deciding.