Opera Australia will receive an injection of $4 million in emergency funding to keep the organization afloat after canceling its run of “Phantom of the Opera,” which raked in $20 million (AUS) in ticket sales, according to a July 25, 2021 article by Linda Morris in The Sydney Morning Herald.

The money will come from the Australia COVID-19 Arts Sustainability Fund, which provided Opera Australia with $1 million in COVID relief in May 2021.

Federal Arts Minister Paul Fletcher, quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald, stated, “Opera Australia has the largest annual revenue of the arts companies supported by the Australia Council. It is the biggest employer amongst them. In a normal year, it presents a large number of high-quality productions in Sydney, Melbourne, and other cities, trains many people who go on to work elsewhere in the arts in Australia and globally, and it has specialised resources and capabilities that, if lost, would be a blow not just to this company but to Australia’s entire arts ecosystem.”

Prior to canceling the show, Opera Australia was already in a $6.4 million hole in 2020, even after selling its Alexandria warehouse for $46 million dollars. The organization experienced a $63 million loss in revenue after sales tanked because of the pandemic.

“Phantom” was set to make its Australian premiere on Sept. 3, 2021, in Sydney, prior to moving on to Melbourne. And while the organization may be able to reschedule the performance for 2022, no decision has been made.

Meanwhile, Opera Australia plans to move forward with its Ring Cycle, which is set to open in Brisbane in Oct. 2021.

“We still have the Ring Cycle in Queensland and we can see what we can announce at the back of this year. The big unknown is what the confidence of the audience will be,” Opera Australia’s chief executive Rory Jeffes stated in The Sydney Morning Herald article.