Irish National Opera

A merger, then a standing start

The company exists because two older ones stopped existing. Opera Theatre Company, the touring outfit, and Wide Open Opera, the project-based company Fergus Sheil founded in 2012, were merged in 2017 to create a single national producer funded by the Arts Council. Irish National Opera launched on 9 January 2018 with a concert titled The Big Bang! at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, and Sheil has been artistic director from that day to this.

The first staged production told anyone paying attention what sort of company it intended to be. Rather than open with a crowd-pleaser, INO sent Thomas Ades's chamber opera Powder Her Face on a national tour in March 2018 — a difficult, sexually explicit modern score, played in regional venues. That double instinct, hard contemporary writing on the road and canonical repertoire in the big Dublin houses, has defined the programming ever since.

Sheil's standing in Ireland has risen with the company's. Trinity College Dublin awarded him an honorary doctorate in December 2023, citing the outreach work and the technical and presentational experiments alongside the mainstage productions.

What London noticed

The reputation outside Ireland was built on Vivaldi. INO's staging of Bajazet, directed by Adele Thomas, played the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House in early 2022 and took the Outstanding Achievement in Opera prize at that year's Olivier Awards, awarded to conductor Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra for their work on it. The company returned to the same composer and the same London stage with L'Olimpiade in May 2024, which drew another Olivier nomination — the company's fourth in six years.

The new-work record is the other half of the case. Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh's The Second Violinist won the FEDORA-Generali Prize, and the Dennehy-Walsh partnership produced another INO commission, The First Child, premiered in 2021. Commissioning on that scale is unusual for a company of INO's age and budget, and it is what co-producers abroad have tended to come for.

The partner list now reads like a mid-sized European house: Santa Fe Opera, Garsington Opera, Scottish Opera, the Royal Swedish Opera, Nouvel Opera Fribourg, Opera Philadelphia, Seattle Opera and the Royal Opera House in London have all shared productions with Dublin.

The records

Signum Records announced a recording partnership with INO in August 2021, and the catalogue that followed leans towards the commissions rather than the repertoire. There is a concert La boheme with Celine Byrne and Anna Devin under Sergio Alapont, and Gerald Barry's Alice's Adventures Under Ground with Claudia Boyle and the Irish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Andre de Ridder.

The two releases that have travelled furthest are both contemporary. Emma O'Halloran and Mark O'Halloran's double bill Trade / Mary Motorhead, recorded with Naomi Louisa O'Connell, John Molloy and Oisin O Dalaigh and the INO Orchestra under Elaine Kelly, was nominated in the Best Opera Recording category at the 2026 Grammy Awards. The First Child, by Dennehy and Walsh with Crash Ensemble under Ryan McAdams, was issued on Signum Classics on 13 February 2026, five years after its stage premiere, and took four-star reviews from BBC Music Magazine and Opera Now.

The season just finished, and what the critics made of it

The 2025-26 season was six productions wide and deliberately lopsided. It opened with a world premiere: MARS, by composer Jennifer Walshe and writer Mark O'Connell, a satire on space colonisation conducted by Elaine Kelly, which played the Galway International Arts Festival in July 2025 before transferring to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. A gala, Viva Verdi, Viva Wagner, followed at the National Concert Hall in September 2025 with Sinead Campbell Wallace, Ryan Capozzo and Yngve Soberg under Keri-Lynn Wilson. Madama Butterfly, co-produced with Scottish Opera and starring Celine Byrne, ran at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre in November 2025. Smetana's The Bartered Bride went out to fifteen venues in chamber form, and Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen toured with Amber Norelai and Jade Phoenix.

The two large spring shows drew the arguments. Rusalka, in March 2026, was a co-production with the Royal Swedish Opera and Nouvel Opera Fribourg, directed by Netia Jones and conducted by Sheil, with Jennifer Davis in the title role. Jones recast the water-sprite's transformation as cosmetic surgery. Davis's singing was praised almost unanimously; the concept was not. The Irish Times called the staging thought-provoking and the cast excellent, the Irish Examiner found it hugely enjoyable, while theartsdesk judged the great singing half-eclipsed by muddled staging, and Bachtrack concluded that the production intrigued more than it convinced.

Norma closed the season and did better. Orpha Phelan relocated Bellini's 1831 tragedy to a post-apocalyptic survivor camp behind a scrap-metal rampart, with Norma in a general's overcoat, designs by Madeleine Boyd and lighting by Matthew Haskins. Salome Jicia sang the title role opposite Siobhan Stagg's Adalgisa, Mario Chang's Pollione and William Guanbo Su's Oroveso, with Maurizio Benini conducting. The Gaiety run in late May 2026 was followed by Wexford on 3 June and Cork on 6 June. The Irish Examiner gave it four stars and called Jicia's Casta Diva a thrilling exercise in vocal control; Bachtrack admired the singing but thought the dystopia hollow.

Where the company stands now

By April 2025 INO had given 184 live performances in 35 venues across 17 counties since its launch. The 2026-27 season announcement, made in April 2026, set a sharper marker: by the end of 2026, nine years in, the company will have presented fully staged opera in every county in Ireland. That is the achievement it is currently trading on, and it is a touring statistic rather than a box-office one.

The money comes from the Arts Council, which allocated €72.3 million to 148 arts organisations under its 2026 development programme, with INO among the national organisations funded. Scale has grown with it: the 2025 production of The Flying Dutchman — the company's first Wagner, co-produced with Garsington Opera — employed more than 150 people between singers, chorus, orchestra, creative teams, crew and set builders. That show also marked the limit of the current critical consensus. One review called it a triumphant debut in the repertoire; another, in the Journal of Music, held that a company on a roll had this time needed more incisive direction of both music and drama.

The 2026-27 slate

Six productions, a gala and an excerpts tour. Carmen opens at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre on 2 November 2026, directed by Paul Curran. The Bartered Bride is revived for ten smaller venues between 21 November and 12 December 2026. Rameau's Les Boreades runs from 5 February to 14 March 2027 as a co-production with the Royal Opera House, Luail — Ireland's national dance company — and the Irish Baroque Orchestra, touring Ireland before an eight-performance London residency. Turandot follows on 4-10 April 2027, directed by David McVicar with Sinead Campbell Wallace in the title role and Celine Byrne as Liu, and Eugene Onegin tours the Gaiety, Cork Opera House and the National Opera House in Wexford from 23 May 2027.

The commission is Testament, a world premiere by composer Tarik O'Regan and writer Colm Toibin, opening at the Galway International Arts Festival in July before a Dublin run at the Gaiety in October. Alongside it, Absolute Scenes puts current and former members of the INO Studio through an hour of staged excerpts from Carmen, The Barber of Seville and Cosi fan tutte at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in June and Nenagh Arts Centre in July — the cheap, portable end of the operation that keeps the every-county claim true.