Irish National Opera (INO) launches tonight (9 January) with a gala concert at Dublin’s National Concert Hall. The new company which was created through the merging of Wide Open Opera and Opera Theatre Company, will present seven operas in its first year, five of them new productions, and tour to 13 venues in Ireland and London’s Barbican Centre.
The inaugural touring production will be Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face, presented in collaboration with Northern Ireland Opera (24 February – 9 March).
Patrick Mason’s new staging of The Marriage of Figaro, with Tara Erraught, Jonathan Lemalu, Ben McAteer, Máire Flavin and Suzanne Murphy among its cast, marks the company’s first full production, opening at Wexford’s National Opera House on 13 April before transferring to the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin for four performances (17, 18, 20 & 21 April). In the summer, Irish National Opera presents Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice in association with Galway International Arts Festival (23 – 29 July). Mezzo soprano Sharon Carty sings in a production directed by Emma Martin.
Irish National Opera enters a period of intense work next autumn, starting at the Barbican Centre with a revival of Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s critically acclaimed The Second Violinist, presented in co-production with Landmark Productions (6 – 8 September). The season continues later that month with a ten-venue tour of Tom Creed’s new production of The Tales of Hoffman (14 September – 6 October) before returning to the Gaiety Theatre for Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle (12, 13 & 14 October). Fergus Sheil conducts the company’s fifth new production at Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, joined by Orla Boylan in the title role of Aida and Gwyn Hughes Jones as Radamès (24, 27 & 29 November; 1 December).
