I’ve lost count of how many “opera is dead” articles I’ve read in my lifetime. Every couple of years, some columnist who attended one bad production in 2003 declares the art form finished, irrelevant, a relic propped up by government subsidies and wealthy donors. The headline writes itself. The takes get shared. Everyone nods solemnly.

And then opera keeps going. Keeps filling theatres. Keeps producing extraordinary art. Keeps evolving.

I’m tired of this narrative. Let me explain why it’s wrong.

The Numbers Don’t Support the Doom

Let’s start with facts. Opera Australia consistently sells hundreds of thousands of tickets per year. Their Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour productions have become genuine cultural events, pulling in audiences that include plenty of first-timers. The 2025 season saw strong box office returns across multiple productions.

Globally, the picture is similar. The Met reported increased attendance post-pandemic. European houses are programming ambitiously. New opera companies are forming, not folding. The English National Opera survived its funding crisis and is reinventing itself. Opera North in the UK is doing some of the most interesting work in the country.

Does opera face challenges? Absolutely. But “facing challenges” and “dying” are very different things. Every performing art faces challenges. Theatre faces challenges. Orchestral music faces challenges. Even cinema, supposedly the dominant art form of our time, is struggling with audience fragmentation and streaming economics.

The difference is that nobody writes “cinema is dead” articles every six months. Opera gets singled out because people who don’t attend it assume nobody else does either.

The Age Argument

“But the audiences are so old!” This is the complaint I hear most often, and it’s the one that annoys me most. Partly because it’s overstated — go to a Handa on the Harbour performance and tell me everyone is over 60 — and partly because it misses the point.

Classical music audiences have always skewed older. This is not a crisis. It’s a pattern. People tend to come to opera in their 40s and 50s, when they have more disposable income and more appetite for complex, emotionally demanding art. The 25-year-old who’s currently into indie rock may well be buying Tosca tickets in 2041. That’s not a failure of the art form. That’s how cultural engagement works.

That said, the companies that are actively working to attract younger audiences — through pricing, programming, outreach, and digital content — are seeing results. Victorian Opera’s accessible pricing model has built a loyal audience of younger attendees. Opera Queensland’s community engagement programs are doing genuinely innovative work in regional areas.

New Works Are Flourishing

Here’s what the “opera is dead” crowd never mentions: we’re in a golden age of new opera composition. More new operas are being commissioned and premiered now than at any point in the last fifty years.

In Australia alone, recent years have seen remarkable new works drawing on Indigenous stories, Australian history, and contemporary themes. The Australia Council for the Arts has supported numerous new opera commissions. Companies large and small are programming world premieres alongside the standard repertoire.

Internationally, composers like Missy Mazzoli, Terence Blanchard, and Kaija Saariaho (whose legacy continues to influence new work) have brought fresh voices and fresh audiences to opera houses. Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones at the Met was a watershed moment — the first opera by a Black composer on that stage, and a commercial and critical triumph.

If opera were truly dying, people wouldn’t be writing new ones. They are. Prolifically.

The Evolution Issue

I think what bothers people — what prompts the “dying” narrative — is that opera is changing. And change makes people uncomfortable, from both directions.

Traditionalists worry that contemporary staging, diverse casting, and digital experimentation are diluting the art form. Progressives worry that the pace of change is too slow, that opera remains too elitist and too expensive. Both camps, ironically, contribute to the perception that something is fundamentally wrong.

But adaptation isn’t decline. Opera has been evolving continuously since the Florentine Camerata first decided to set drama to music in the late 1500s. It absorbed Romantic nationalism, survived two world wars, incorporated electronic music, moved outdoors, moved online. It is — and I say this as someone who spent a decade in the chorus — remarkably resilient.

The form we’re seeing now, with its blend of traditional repertoire and new commissions, live performance and streaming, grand opera houses and pop-up venues, is not a form in decline. It’s a form in transition. Those are completely different things.

What’s Actually Threatening Opera

If you want to worry about something, worry about funding. Government arts funding in Australia has been under pressure for years, and opera is expensive to produce. Orchestras, choruses, soloists, directors, designers, rehearsal time — the costs are enormous. Without public subsidy, ticket prices become prohibitive, which reinforces the elitism narrative, which undermines the case for public subsidy. It’s a vicious cycle.

Worry about that. Advocate for arts funding. Write to your MP. Donate to your local company if you can afford to.

But stop writing the obituary. Opera doesn’t need eulogies. It needs audiences, advocates, and a bit of faith that an art form which has survived for four hundred years can probably handle the challenges of 2026.

I’ll be in the stalls. Come join me.