A week prior to the opening weekend the 2017 Adelaide Festival, and the event has had its largest box office sales in more than 20 years.
The ticket sales across the main programme of 31 theatre, music, opera, dance, film and visual arts shows have returned its best result since 1996. The $3 million sales mark beats the previous best mark, $2.5 million, achieved in 2010.
Barrie Kosky’s critically-acclaimed Glyndebourne Opera Festival production Saul sold out in December, shortly followed by Canadian dance theatre work Betroffenheit in January, as well as Adelaide Writers’ Week lunch The Drunken Botanist and the weekend Chamber Landscapes chamber music programme, a 'mini festival' at Mt Barker.
Click here to read our January Adelaide Festival cover story, '1967: Music In The Key Of Yes’.
The Secret River has broken box office records for State Theatre Company SA as the highest grossing production and fastest selling show in the company’s history.
With ticket sales strong across the entire programme, many shows are already well ahead of their anticipated sales including theatre show Wot? No Fish!, classical music concerts by Concerto Italiano and La Gaia Scienza, Rufus Wainwright’s double bill concert of opera and highlights from Rufus Does Judy, both dance productions by Israeli company L-E-V, and Peter and the Wolf starring Miriam Margolyes alongside the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.
Additional performances have also been added to interactive sound installation Gardens Speak and Lynette Wallworth’s film Coral: Rekindling Venus at the Adelaide Planetarium due to popular demand.
Minister for the Arts, the Hon Jack Snelling said: "This is a phenomenal achievement. Once again our city has proven why it is Australia's number one festival destination.
“Every South Australian should be proud of the Adelaide Festival and its success... Another amazing thing it does is it creates local jobs, putting food on the table for every day South Australians and adding millions to our economy."
The Adelaide Festival features 31 theatre, music, opera, dance, film and visual arts events alongside Adelaide Writers’ Week and WOMADelaide, including 16 Australian premieres, 17 events exclusive to Adelaide and 3 world premieres from 3-19 March.
