The national opera company reined in expenditure by $14.6 million last year to arrest successive deficits and deliver a modest $553,000 surplus.
Opera Australia chief executive Craig Hassall said he was thrilled with the result: "For an opera company a surplus is a very rare thing. " Cost-cutting came mostly from fewer Melbourne shows staged and a gangbusters Sydney winter season with almost 12,000 additional tickets sold over the previous year. 
Hassall said the uptick in Sydney, representing a $2m box -office bonus, was programming-driven and achieved from just one extra performance - 51 shows versus 50 staged in 2014.
"Turandot, La Traviata, Don Carlos and Marriage of Figaro are just more popular than Rigoletto, Otello, Don Giovanni and The Elixir of Love which we staged the previous year." Melbourne audiences received one production fewer in spring and in autumn at Arts Centre, Victoria.
Hassall said lower ticket prices and higher costs of performing in Melbourne, away from the company's Sydney home, meant rationalising those seasons was a boon for the bottom line.
"Even though it's a far better theatre, it's dispiriting to be playing to houses that aren't full," he said.
Hassall was satisfied with the reallocation even though Sydney now far exceeds Melbourne as the beneficiary of the national opera company's main stage programming, 120 shows to 33.
At Sydney Opera House tourists now account for 35 to 40 per cent of tickets sold and attendances over the year averaged 70 per cent.
"We love going to Melbourne but we have to be realistic about what we can afford," Hassall said.
OA's total admissions dipped to 513,000 from 649,000, largely because of an additional commercial season the previous year, a return season of South Pacific.
ARTS P14-15