As we close out 2025, I want to look back at a year that was genuinely interesting for the intersection of technology and performing arts. Not the breathless press releases about “the future of opera” — I mean what actually happened, what worked, and what turned out to be hype.

Streaming Found Its Level

Remember when everyone thought streaming would replace live performance? The pandemic forced every company in the world to stream, and for a while it looked like the future. Three years on, the picture is clearer: streaming is a complement to live performance, not a replacement.

Opera Australia’s digital platform has settled into a sustainable rhythm — archival recordings of past productions, behind-the-scenes content, and the occasional live stream. It’s not generating significant revenue, but it’s doing something arguably more valuable: introducing new audiences to the art form. Several audience development managers I’ve spoken to say that a meaningful percentage of new attendees cite online content as their entry point.

The Metropolitan Opera’s Met Opera on Demand remains the gold standard for streaming opera, with a catalogue of over 800 recordings. In Australia, their HD cinema broadcasts continue to draw audiences who might not attend a live performance — and that’s fine. More people engaging with opera in any format is a win.

AI Got Real (Sort Of)

2025 was the year AI tools moved from novelty to genuine utility in arts organisations. Not in the dramatic ways the tech press predicted — nobody is staging an AI-composed opera (thank goodness). But in the back office, the changes are real.

Ticketing systems now routinely use machine learning to optimise pricing. Marketing teams are using AI tools to segment audiences and personalise outreach. Companies are working with firms like AI agency Sydney to build data infrastructure that helps them understand who’s coming, who’s not, and why.

The most interesting AI application I saw this year was at the Dutch National Opera, which used AI-assisted tools to restore and reconstruct historical set designs for a production of a rarely-performed Baroque work. The technology helped fill in gaps in incomplete historical records, giving the design team a starting point that would have taken months of archival research to assemble manually.

Social Media Shifted

TikTok and Instagram Reels continued to be the dominant platforms for arts content aimed at younger audiences. Several opera singers built significant followings this year by posting rehearsal clips, vocal technique explanations, and day-in-the-life content. The Australian soprano Stacey Alleaume has been doing particularly engaging work on Instagram, showing the reality of a working opera singer’s life — the travel, the practice, the glamour and the unglamour of it all.

What’s interesting is that this content works best when it’s authentic and unpolished. The most-viewed opera content on social media in 2025 wasn’t professional marketing — it was singers filming themselves in rehearsal rooms, showing the cracks and the struggles alongside the beautiful moments. Audiences respond to humanity, not polish.

Virtual Reality Remained Niche

I need to eat some words here. I predicted in early 2025 that VR opera would have a breakthrough year. It didn’t. The technology is impressive — I tried a VR Don Giovanni at a tech conference in Melbourne, and being “inside” the set was genuinely thrilling. But the hardware remains expensive, the content is limited, and most audiences simply don’t have access.

The companies investing in VR content are playing a long game, betting that the technology will become mainstream within five years. They might be right. But for now, VR opera is a curiosity rather than a significant audience development tool.

Data Infrastructure Improved

This is the boring but important one. Performing arts organisations historically have had terrible data systems — separate databases for ticketing, donations, marketing, and programming, none of which talk to each other. In 2025, several major Australian arts organisations invested in consolidating their data, building unified audience profiles that let them understand patron behaviour across all touchpoints.

This matters because it enables better decision-making about everything from programming to pricing to outreach. When a company can see that a patron who attended Carmen also donated to the education program and subscribed to the newsletter, they can tailor their engagement in ways that were previously impossible.

What I’m Watching for 2026

Three things:

1. AI-powered supertitles going from trial to implementation in at least one major house (I wrote about this earlier this week).
2. Dynamic pricing becoming standard rather than experimental. Airlines figured this out decades ago. Performing arts companies are catching up.
3. Cross-platform audience journeys — the company that cracks the connection between social media engagement and ticket purchases will have a genuine competitive advantage.

The performing arts have always been slow to adopt technology, partly because the core product — live humans performing for live humans in a shared space — is inherently analogue. But the infrastructure around that core experience is increasingly digital, and 2025 was the year that shift became undeniable.

Here’s to 2026. May it bring good art, smart technology, and audiences who are as excited about the future of opera as I am.

— Margot