Top performance for the Opera House

Thursday 02 April 2015

The number of people going to the Jersey Opera House increased by 50 per cent last year.

More than 90,000 people – equivalent to nine-tenths of the Island’s population – visited the theatre in 2014, a significant increase on the year before.

With a new focus on digital marketing, the Gloucester Street theatre also increased online sales by more than 100 per cent over the same period.

The Opera House is bucking a national trend of general decline, according to its sales and marketing manager, Abi Nance - the subject of the Unplugged feature in this month's Connect magazine, which is out now.

“We had a couple of years which were tricky but we weathered the storm and I think now we’re heading in the right direction,’ she said. “I think people are aware of the venue and more and more of what’s going on here. We’re getting a lot of people through the door and the amount of usage of this venue increased by 50 per cent last year.”

Comedians such as Kevin Bridges and Lee Evans remain the biggest draw for Islanders but Ms Nance said the Opera House had to balance more niche culture with the commercially successful crowd-pullers.

“We know that there are certain events that we’re going to put on that are going to lose money but as a service to the community, we put them on. For example, dance. It might not generate the audience but there are a number of people in the Island who are going to want to see top-class dance.”

Financially, Ms Nance said the Opera House was in good shape but it couldn’t afford to be complacent.

She said: "Our grant from the States is approximately £400,000 a year which is wonderful but when you’ve got a building of this age and magnitude, there is obviously a lot of costs to run it and we have to find about 65% of our annual operational costs. We have to find that money through our box office and catering so do have to find quite an additional sum of money to keep this place afloat every year.”