SYDNEY - Olympic Arts Festival organisers, under attack from some quarters over poor ticket sales, say the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's two concerts have attracted strong interest.
The six-week festival, beginning on August 18, has been described as the largest event of its kind in Australia. The NZSO's performances in the Sydney Opera House will be on September 25 and 26.
Festival spokeswoman Sue Couttie said more than a third of the 2670 tickets for the orchestra's "Antarctic" evening had gone.
That programme features Vaughan Williams' Sinfonia Antarctica accompanied by a film of Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole.
Fewer tickets had been sold for the Mozart and Mahler concert the following day.
Considering the NZSO performances were still eight weeks away, Ms Couttie said tickets sales so far had gone "fantastically well."
However, in terms of the festival overall, organisers have had to fight a bout of negative publicity this week over what one newspaper dubbed "another ticketing fiasco" for Games organiser Socog.
The Australian Financial Review quoted one unnamed arts company head as saying the way the festival had been run so far had been "appalling."
The paper said box-office receipts for some shows would be under 10 per cent of capacity, causing financial headaches for the companies involved.
Opera Australia chief executive Adrian Collette said ticket sales for some of its Olympic period performances were as low as 8 per cent of seats available. Last year, OA kept some Olympic-period tickets back from sale because Socog wanted to market them to the International Olympic Committee and Olympic sponsors.
One complaint from arts companies has been the lack of promotion of individual events, another the length of time for contract negotiations with Socog.
However, festival general manager Craig Hassall hit back, saying 36 per cent of tickets had already been snapped up.
He said there was no precedent for an arts event of this scale in Australia.
However, as a comparison, the annual Sydney Festival opened with between 25 per cent and 40 per cent of capacity sold, and momentum would pick up once that three-week event began.
Other New Zealand involvement in the Olympic festival will include a Maori performance by a Tainui group at the Opera House forecourt on the afternoon of September 25.
Transtasman group Kaha will take part in Hemispheres, a two-day celebration of world music at Centennial Park on September 9 and 10.
There will also be an exhibition of photographic prints showing young Hokianga Maori by artist Ross T. Smith at the Sydney College of Arts from mid-August to September 23.
- NZPA
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