The most basic tickets start at $1100, with the premium seats going for more than $2100: Opera Australia's production of Wagner's The Ring, which is returning to Melbourne in late 2016, is not the most accessible of shows.
Creative Industries Minister Martin Foley admits it's not the kind of show many Victorians could afford to see.
Stefan Vinke, as Siegfried, with the Rhinemaidens in Opera Australia's 2013 Melbourne Ring season, will return in 2016.
Yet, it hasn't stopped Victoria's Major Events body from outbidding other states to secure Opera Australia's second season of the four-opera epic, which it expects to contribute $15 million to the region's economy.
Up to 40 per cent of those who attended the premiere of the Neil Armfield-directed production of the 16-hour cycle were from overseas or interstate (far more of the latter than the former), and they're the kind of cashed-up visitors Australian states are fighting to attract.
Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen will return for 2016, as will several cast members from 2013, including Stefan Vinke, Jud Arthur, Warwick Fyfe and Taryn Fiebig.
Armfield, who was recently announced as a co-artistic director of the Adelaide Festival from 2017, was already working on aspects of the 2016 production, Opera Australia artistic director Lyndon Terracini said, and would have some surprises in store.
Opera Australia chef executive Craig Hassall said the 2016 staging was the next step towards fulfilling the company's aspiration to make Melbourne a regular international destination for The Ring.
Philanthropist and Lonely Planet founders Maureen and Tony Wheeler contributed $5 million to the 2013 staging, which attracted 5800 people to the State Theatre at Arts Centre Melbourne over three cycles of the four operas. They have again provided some funds for its return, along with businessman Hans Henkell.
Mr Foley denied that bringing the opera back to Melbourne so soon would lessen the prestige of what had, until now, been for many a once in a generation experience (it had been only staged once before in Melbourne, in 1913, and more recently in South Australia, in 2004).
"If you want to turn out the lights at 7pm, then go to Adelaide," he said.
He said Melbourne was a global music destination and like some European cities (such as Vienna or Bayreuth), which stage the operas regularly, had the opportunity to become a "Ring city".
"There are such cities that focus on The Ring and bring them back on a regular enough basis that they're part of their repertoire," he said.
"As we saw in 2013, there is enormous global appetite as well as local appetite for these events.
"It's very exciting frankly. I'm confident that this will be both an enormous success . . . as [much] as the last one . . .
"The kind of market that [it] is attracting, they're here for a week, that it will have enormous visitation benefits around the whole state."
Asked how Victorians would benefit, given few of them would be able to afford a ticket, he said they would benefit from the flow-on effect of visitors and other cultural events.
"We're consciously and deliberately targeting a market, but also happens during a time, near the Melbourne Festival, that will be part of a much wider focus and events.
"[Those visitors] are a high-value, high-yielding, globally footloose market that has to be captured."