The impact of a full year of theatre lockdowns is immediately apparent in this third annual Opera Canada economic review of Canada’s opera sector. Total revenues for the Top 40 performing companies in 2020/21 were $57.1 million, compared to $72.2 million the previous year, a further 21% decline since the onset of the COVID pandemic. Our first sector review of 2018/19, when companies were operating “as normal” with full performance seasons, pegged revenues of the sector at $85.1 million. The decline in revenues over the worst of the pandemic amounts to $28 million, a 33% decline.
The numbers are grim, but hardly surprising. Performing companies rely on three revenue streams—ticket sales and related earned revenues, public funding and donations. The earned-revenue stream has been largely knocked out of the equation, and that has been especially hard on smaller organizations coast to coast. As our tables show, without public funding and private donations, the whole sector would be in dire straits.
Our survey is again based on the T3010 annual reports Revenue Canada requires of all registered charities,
