Opera Australia chose an unusual day on which to announce it had parted ways with its artistic director, Jo Davies. Tomorrow – Saturday, August 31 – is the Sydney opening night for Sunset Boulevard. So you have a vitally important production for OA’s coffers and you decide that yes, today would be just the day for the big reveal.

Perhaps it’s just me but that seems to show a fairly high level of disrespect for the show – your own show – and its performers. Anyway, it’s done.

The press release that dropped into inboxes this morning is, as is the way of these things, lavish in its praise for Davies. Indeed, so glowing are the tributes from CEO Fiona Allan and Board chair Rod Sims they do make you wonder what really went on. Surely someone whose achievements are so striking, according to OA’s leadership, shouldn’t be heading out the door. 

From Sims: “The Sydney Winter productions including Tosca, Watershed, Il Trittico and Hamlet were all highly acclaimed. Jo’s engagement of three young directors for the three short operas that comprise Il Trittico was a brilliant idea and demonstrated huge commitment to the next generation of Australian talent. Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves, which Jo championed for Melbourne, was a powerful production that saw a strong cast of local Australian singers and many female creatives shaping the work. 

“For our 2024 Melbourne season Jo also found a fantastic solution for us to present a large-scale opera in Melbourne while the State Theatre – our Melbourne home – is being revitalised. The resulting Tosca at Margaret Court Arena, while no mean feat to stage on a tennis court, was a milestone achievement for OA, and very well received by our younger audiences who are members of our Under 35s program.” 

From Allan: “We’re very excited about Jo’s 2025 season. It demonstrates Jo’s unwavering commitment to ensuring the relevance of our artform for today’s audiences. Jo’s strength as an artistic voice and director are clear.” Also attributed to Allan: the 2025 program “sees some of the greatest operas ever written in productions with the best Australian creative talent, alongside a few highlights from international opera legends”. 

Yes, that’s right, Davies has programmed 2025 – a program I assume the Board approved – but is leaving the building this very afternoon. Obviously tensions at OA HQ were so intractable that the parting of ways couldn’t wait until the silly season at the end of the year. What the nature of the tensions are can only be guessed at but there have been rumours that relations between Davies and Allan have been less than harmonious. 

The stated reason for Davies’s departure is our old friend “differences of opinion”. Apparently there wasn’t agreement “about how Opera Australia should successfully balance artistic innovation, audience development and commercial imperatives moving forward”. 

Let me just mention that Davies has had her feet under the desk for less than a year. And that OA so wanted her it was prepared to wait many months for her while she fulfilled existing commitments. And that presumably the recruitment process went deeply into what Davies’s plans for the company were, not just for this year but next year and the year after. Surely she’d been thoroughly grilled about that, or you’d hope so. You don’t bung on a season of opera in the blink of an eye. 

Oh I forgot, at OA you apparently do, because when previous artistic director Lyndon Terracini left more than a year before his originally announced date of departure and Davies hadn’t yet arrived, Lindy Hume was drafted in to pull together this year’s Sydney summer season. The highly experienced Hume did wonders but there was, not surprisingly, a make-shift air hanging over the season. 

There are similarities here with the early departure from Queensland Ballet of new artistic director Leanne Benjamin. There was also apparently an unbridgeable gap between the desires of the artistic director and the QB Board’s views on how to keep the company afloat.

But I can’t help thinking there is something very wrong with recruitment processes when, shortly into their tenures, the likes of Jo Davies, Leanne Benjamin and the Adelaide Festival’s former AD Ruth Mackenzie, pack up their desks. If there’s such a violent mismatch between the AD’s vision and the company’s fortunes, how could that have been missed? 

If there are other issues that will forever remain in the realm of non-disclosure agreements, we can only conjecture what they might be. 

Whatever the reasons are, it’s a damaging look for OA. The speed of the departure leaves quite a few arts journalists, including me, with an unexpected gap in the diary. There was quite a bit lined up for Davies next week ahead of the 2025 announcement. I’d been looking forward to talking to her.

It is indisputable that arts organisations are going through a really rough time. The effects of the pandemic are still brutal and companies have to change what they do and how they do it. So, apart from today’s divorce, how does OA propose to proceed?

 “Since July, the company has been conducting an independent review of artistic management and planning processes which will inform decisions regarding future artistic management and roles. Announcements flowing from this review will be made in due course,” today’s press release stated.

In the meantime we will hear about 2025 somehow, although not from Davies. And what about the Guys & Dolls she was down to direct for next year’s Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, another important money-spinner for the company. OA says it is going to happen. Davies’s name carefully wasn’t mentioned.