Budgetary Woes

The 1975/76 and 1976/77 Seasons

Steady Audience but Coming in Over Budget

In the 1975-76 season, the NAC saw an average of 89.3 percent attendance and gross revenue of $160,720.70 across 12 opera performances, though the Summer Festival’s productions of La Traviata and The Magic Flute both cost far more than budgeted–$34,000 and $81,000 respectively, the total cost of the festival was $1,121,355 (National Arts Centre 1976, 28-29; Jennings 2019, 127). It is important to note that this figure does not include visiting opera companies or visiting operettas. As a result of this, board members Arthur Gelber and David Golden assumed much stricter control regarding future opera productions. Golden actually “...[refused] to approve any new budgets until the $150,000 opera deficit was dealt with” (Jennings, 2019, 127).

Out of the 303 productions that took place at the National Arts Centre during the 1976-1977 season, five were operas that were performed a total of 14 times. Three of the biggest operas that year were Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades, for which the NAC received a grant of $25,000 from Southam Press Limited. They also staged Rossini’s Le Comte Ory, and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro - for which the NAC received $25,000 from Metropolitan Life.

Although the annual report states that the Centre had a record attendance of 228,798 audience members that season, the paid attendance for the 1976 Festival was 83.9 percent – a slight drop from the 1975 Festival, which had 89.4 percent attendance. It is also important to note that although the NAC made $295,539 in box office revenue, however, the cost of opera that year was $1,075,885 (National Arts Centre 1977, 9). Again, the organization was over budget with their operatic productions.