As Covid-19 restrictions lift, promoters and producers are getting back to work and audiences are being gently invited back into performance spaces. This includes opera companies on both sides of the border.

Stephanie Dufresne, Naomi Louisa O’Connell and Ronan Leahy (Photo Pat Redmond)

Extra tickets have now been released for Irish National Opera’s upcoming season of ‘Least Like The Other—Searching for Rosemary Kennedy’ by Brian Irvine and Netia Jones and featuring mezzo soprano Naomi Louisa O’Connell, dancer Stephanie Dufresne and actor Ronan Leahy. Opening in Dublin’s O’Reilly Theatre on September 11 for a run of six nights, before transferring to Cork and Limerick, further details (including booking info) are available at irishnationalopera.ie

For the first fully-staged ‘mainscale’ opera since February 2020, audiences can head north to see NI Opera’s upcoming season of Puccini’s ‘La Bohème’. This will be incoming Artistic Director Cameron Menzies’s first production with the company, with a cast led by Noah Stewart (Rodolfo), Gemma Summerfield (Mimi), Emma Morwood (Musetta), and Yuriy Yurchuk (Marcello). Staged in Belfast’s atmospheric Carlisle Memorial Church, the production opens on September 18 and runs for four nights.

NI Opera cast meet to rehearse ‘La Boheme’

Conductor Rebecca Lang says of this unique production: “I love bringing theatre to audiences in unexpected spaces – it gives us all the opportunity to experience pieces in new ways… La Bohème is the perfect choice for us as artists to be part of the collective emerging from the rubble we have all had to endure.”

For further details (and booking info) see niopera.com