NI Opera is an opera company founded in 2010 and based in Northern Ireland.
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Funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, NI Opera was founded in 2010 as a Northern Ireland-based opera company with a remit for performing high-quality opera throughout Northern Ireland, while promoting young talent from the region and forming partnerships with arts organizations from Northern Ireland, Great Britain and further afield. The company is based in the Grand Opera House, Belfast. Its first Artistic Director is Oliver Mears.
After launching in October 2010, in December 2010 NI Opera collaborated with Barry Douglas and his Camerata Ireland orchestra in a Christmas concert at the Ulster Hall, with three young singers all from Northern Ireland: Giselle Allen, Susan Boyd and Emma Morwood. In February 2011 it co-produced its first NI-wide tour, with Second Movement Opera, a production of The Medium by Gian Carlo Menotti which travelled to venues in Armagh, Downpatrick, Newtonabbey and Omagh, with Derry-born singer Doreen Curran in the title role.
The company performed its first major production, Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, in three different historic spaces in Derry, in March 2011, to widespread critical acclaim.
The company's 2011-12 season has so far included a concert featuring Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and the winner of the company's inaugural Glenarm vocal competition at the Belfast Festival at Queens, a co-produced touring production of Orpheus in the Underworld with a new script by Rory Bremner (co-produced with Scottish Opera) in Autumn 2011, a production which toured Scotland and N Ireland before travelling to the Young Vic Theatre in London in December 2011.
In late November 2011 it produced Engelbert Humperdinck's fairy-tale opera Hansel and Gretel in Belfast's Grand Opera House, a production with the Ulster Orchestra in the pit, and which travels to the Millenium Forum, Derry, in January 2012. The production features international opera singer Graham Clark as the Witch.
In March 2012 NI Opera will tour a new production of The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten which travels to the Buxton Festival in July 2012. The cast includes Fiona Murphy, Andrew Tortise, Giselle Allen and Yvonne Howard, and the production is designed by Omagh-born Annemarie Woods, winner of the Ring Award 2011.
The company launches its 2012-13 season in March 2012.