Declining Audiences

Festival Canada 1977: Opera Series (Poster)

Drops in Attendance Impact the Bottom Line

During the 1977-1978 season, the NAC held 19 opera performances. Although 28,742 people came to the 1977 Festival, this was actually a drop in attendance from previous years to 72.9 percent. Of the many performances that took place during the Festival that year, the operas included were Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, Donizetti's Don Pasquale, and Mozart's The Magic Flute, as well as two operas in collaboration with The Banff Centre's School, Ermano Wolf-Ferrari's The Secret of Susanna, and Gian Carlo Monetti's The Telephone (National Arts Centre, 1978, 78). The total revenue from the box office from that year's festival was $237,703, the total expenses for the festival that season were $928,331 (National Arts Centre 1978, 59). 

Back in 1975, the audience attendance at the Festival was 89.3 percent (National Arts Centre 1975). However, in the 1978-1979 season, audience attendance for opera went down to 83 percent (National Arts Centre 1979, 79). While this is not a drastic decline and is still certainly a respectable and healthy attendance rate, there were financial implications to consider. If the NAC was unable to break even on their opera with an 89.3 percent attendance rate, how would a drop in audience impact the opera? Lawrence O’Toole, a journalist from Maclean's magazine, concluded that, although the performances were first-rate, opera at the NAC would never last due to subpar administration and the apparent lack of interest (O'Toole 1979, 55). 

At this point, the NAC was already losing money from their opera productions. While a substantial part of their annual budget came from their federal funding, $18 million for this season, O'Toole's review of Festival Ottawa 1979 revealed that the Centre had planned to set aside $1.26 million for the July portion of the Festival. He noted that the NAC had hoped to sell 85 percent of their seats, but makes it clear that, unfortunately, the Festival that summer was not nearly as successful as the NAC had hoped it would be. That year the total revenue for the festival $354,925, the total amount for expenses came to $970,494 (National Arts Centre 1979, 35; O'Toole 1979, 55).