The Canadian Opera Company issued its Annual Report and Financials for 2015/16 today.  As far as ticket sales go it was fairly flat in terms of tickets sold and revenues.  Subscription sales were down a bit but single ticket sales were up.  That’s probably the Carmen effect.  That all equates to around 91% capacity sold which isn’t bad.  Tickets to people under 30 are still less than 10% of tickets sold (and probably way, way less than 10% of box office revenue).  Clearly there’s no magic bullet for replacing an aging subscriber base.  Individual donations and government grants were both down by about 5%.  That’s being spun as largely a loss of one time grants and extraordinary gifts but down is still down and the reduction in Ontario Arts Council funding can’t be spun.  Still, one way or another it was finagled into a break even year which is not too shabby for any arts organization.  Endowment performance was steady.

It’s a good product on the stage.  The programming is about as adventurous as one could expect from a large house with minimal government funding.  There is no financial crisis or signs of impending doom.  I’ll take that.

2013/14 saw the decline in ticket sales and box office revenue at the COC continue, though less precipitously than in the previous couple of years.  Sales were down from 109297 tickets in 2012/13 to 106748 seats sold in 2013/14.  Revenue was also down from $9.9 million to $9.7 million.  A reduction in performances boosted capacity utilisation to 94% but heavy discounting at both ends of the season left the revenue per seat essentially static at just under $91.

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