Rehearsals for Opera Australia’s production of The Phantom of the Opera, produced with The Really Useful Company, in association with Cameron Mackintosh, were to have started this coming Monday.

Australian performer Josh Piterman, who had been playing the Phantom in London’s West End when the production was shuttered because of COVID, couldn’t wait. As he told Limelight earlier this year, it felt like he was living a dream when he was cast in the OA production.

Audiences were just as excited, with the show making box office history when tickets went on sale at the Sydney Opera House. Over 100,000 tickets have now been sold for the Sydney season due to open in September, and the season at Arts Centre Melbourne in November.

But today, Opera Australia announced that The Phantom of the Opera has been postponed until 2022.

Josh Piterman and Kelly Mathieson in the West production of The Phantom of the Opera, 2019. Photo © Manuel Harlan

“Last year was bad enough, but this year’s worse,” OA Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini tells Limelight, adding that the production of Phantom had been seen as a way to get the company “out...