Lyndon Terracini refuses press tickets for two senior critics in response to negative articles.

Opera Australia’s Lyndon Terracini is far from shy about publicly rebuffing his critics. Just last September he locked horns in an online spat with the Head of the School of Music at the Australian National University, Peter Tregear, over an article criticising the “conservatism” of Terracini’s 2015 season for Opera Australia. Now it has emerged that the outspoken Artistic Director has requested the removal of two senior critics from the complimentary press tickets list for Opera Australia’s 2015 Sydney Summer Season.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s music critic Harriet Cunningham learned in early December that she would no longer be welcome at Opera Australia performances when an OA publicist described Terracini as “very offended” by an article she authored, published on Crikey’s arts website, Daily Review, entitled ‘Why I’m Not Going to the Opera Next Year’. In the article Cunningham describes Terracini’s 2015 programming decisions as “patronising and disingenuous” adding that Terracini was guilty of a “shameless give-em-what-they-want approach.” Cunningham has had a close association with Opera Australia for several years and has been regularly commissioned to write program notes for the company since...