Opera Ballet Vlaanderen has had a bumper year. In the calendar year 2023 (not the season), a total of just over 152,000 visitors passed through the doors of the houses in Antwerp and Ghent or attended one of the many performances at home and abroad.
For the opera performances, they sold more tickets per performance than ever before (an average of 938 to be precise), which meant that virtually all performances were sold out. The revenue per opera performance also increased dramatically, by as much as 38% compared to the average of the past 10 years.
The figures for ballet performances remained stable compared to previous years (40,544 visitors), but here too the average revenue increased by just over 20%.
49% of people bought a ticket for one of our performances for the first time.
In addition, the VONK productions in particular made a great leap forward. VONK is the third pillar within OBV that works with young people, experimentation and inclusion. 11,242 people attended a VONK production, a doubling compared to 2022.
The most popular performance of 2023 was Le Nozze di Figaro (see photo above) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart directed by Tom Goossens with 12,486 visitors, and since its launch on operavision.eu on 8 September, another 107,000 viewers have watched it online. Nozze is closely followed by Creature, the ballet by Akram Khan, for which 11,980 people bought a ticket.
6% of the visitors came from abroad in 2023 and 20% of the domestic visitors came from provinces other than Antwerp and East Flanders, where the OBV houses are located. The average visitor to their performances was 55 years old, but at the same time 9% of the tickets were sold to those aged 26 or younger. Almost 49% of the people bought a ticket for one of the performances for the first time.
"After the corona years and despite the energy crisis, these are more than excellent figures for a year with sometimes adventurous productions," said artistic director Jan Vandenhouwe. "It is wonderful to see that VONK is taking wing and that with youth performances like Kruistocht or participatory projects like Schemer we are bringing a completely new audience into the theatres who we let taste the opera and dance bug. My gratitude to everyone at OBV but also to the audience is therefore great."
On 9 February, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen will see the world premiere of Brodeck: a new opera by Daan Janssens and Fabrice Murgia, based on the book Het verslag van Brodeck by Philippe Claudel.