Opera Australia is Australia's major opera company, formed by the merger of the Australian Opera and the Victorian State Opera companies in 1996.
It is based at the Sydney Opera House for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in at the Victorian Arts Centre in Melbourne, Victoria.
Like most opera companies, it is funded by a combination of government funding, corporate sponsorship, private philanthropy, and ticket sales. The proportion of its revenue from ticket sales is considerably higher than that of most companies.
As well as the traditional classical repertoire, a number of Australian operas have been premiered by the company.
The company is perhaps best known internationally for its association with Joan Sutherland, one of the best-known sopranos of the 1980s, and Baz Luhrmann's attention-grabbing production of La Bohème in the early 1990s.
The company has a second arm, OzOpera, which tours smaller centres and performs in non-traditional settings (for instance, for school groups).
The opera board, citing differences between artistic vision and the company budget, is not renewing Young's three-year contract beyond the end of 2003.
The chairwoman of OperaAustralia, Rowena Danziger, and its chief executive, Adrian Collette, made the announcement yesterday - first to 300 Sydney staff and artists, at a meeting in one of the company's rehearsal studios, then in a telephone link to the Melbourne office.
Peter Garnick, managing director of Orchestra Victoria, which performs for the opera in Melbourne, said yesterday, "She is a terrific musician and she challenges the orchestra to play better and better.
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