INO 2025–26 | New Season Announcement

Love is a complicated affair. It can be thrilling, dangerous and intoxicating but also confusing, devastating and deadly. Irish National Opera’s 2025-26 season contains all of this – and it even enjoys the fun side of getting married! INO’s Artistic Director Fergus Sheil has assembled an ambitious season with six new productions including one world premiere, a gala concert, an outdoor film screening and a staged concert tour of opera excerpts. The new season’s work spans the heavens and the earth, the mythic and the rustic, featuring both celebrated masterpieces and ground-breaking contemporary opera.

“This season really is out of this world,” says Sheil. “Rusalka’s Song to the Moon is one of my favourite operatic moments, but Norma’s great aria Casta diva is also addressed to the moon. It is a prayer that the moon will bring peace to earth. There’s no peace for Madama Butterfly as she uses her telescope to watch over the ocean for the return of her absent love. Our new commission blasts us into outer space as composer Jennifer Walshe and librettist Mark O’Connell imagine what may very soon lie ahead in the exploration of Mars.

Our 25-26 season is an opportunity to renew and deepen relationships with much loved artists such as singers Celine Byrne (Madama Butterfly), Jennifer Davis (Rusalka) and Sinéad Campbell Wallace, who appears in a gala Verdi and Wagner concert in September. We welcome back directors Daisy Evans (Madama Butterfly), Netia Jones (Rusalka) and Orpha Phelan (Norma). We are also excited to welcome new collaborators with Maurizio Benini (conductor Norma), Keri-Lynn Wilson (conductor Viva Verdi, Viva Wagner), Louisa Muller (director The Bartered Bride) and Jennifer Walshe (composer Mars).”

The season kicks off with a darkly comic new opera MARS a newly commissioned work from Jennifer Walshe (music) and Mark O’Connell (text). It is scientifically rigorous but also hilariously entertaining in its examination of science, astronomy, the environment, colonisation of space and human interaction in extreme situations. MARS is co-directed by Jennifer Walshe and Tom Creed and is conducted by Grammy award nominee Elaine Kelly. Performers include sopranos Nina Guo and Jade Phoenix, and mezzo-sopranos Doreen Curran and Sarah Richmond. MARS will premiere at the Galway International Arts Festival from 25–27 July and will run in The Abbey Theatre Dublin from 7–9 August 2025.

September will see a high-voltage concert Viva Verdi, Viva Wagner celebrating the astonishing talents of star Irish soprano Sinéad Campbell Wallace, who is taking international opera stages by storm. Sinéad is joined by US tenor Ryan Capozzo and Norwegian baritone Yngve Søberg in the National Concert Hall. The concert features the two titans of Romantic opera, Verdi and Wagner. The INO Orchestra will be in its largest ever formation, taking on some of the most lavish, powerful and hauntingly-beautiful music ever written under the baton of Keri-Lynn Wilson.

In Madama Butterfly, Puccini’s tale of innocence, betrayal and irreversible loss star Irish soprano Celine Byrne reprises her acclaimed role as Cio-Cio-San, hailed in 2019 as “outstanding” by the Irish Times, with the Sunday Independent describing her voice as “glorious”. With its heart-breaking  Un bel dì her fragile is optimism crushed under cultural and emotional misunderstanding. Directed by Daisy Evans (L’Olimpiade 2024) and conducted by Fergus Sheil, this co-production with Scottish Opera, in association with Bord Gáis Energy Theatre runs for four performances from 2 – 8 November 2025.

A new development for 2025 Irish National Opera will produce a flexible, chamber production of Smetana’s heart-warming comedy The Bartered Bride, with 11 singers and 5 musicians touring to seven completely new venues for INO. In this heart-warming comedy, Mařenka and Jeník overcome obstacles from parents and an interfering marriage broker to finally succeed in tying the knot. Director Louisa Muller makes her INO debut, and conductor Richard Peirson directs his own new arrangement of the score. Soprano Amy Ní Fhearraigh and tenor Egor Zhuravskii lead an ensemble cast. The Bartered Bride opens in Axis Arts Centre, Dublin before touring nationwide from 22 November to 6 December.

Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen is a life-affirming portrait of the human condition, with both human and animal characters encountering love, loss and the inevitable cycles of life. Conducted by rising-star UK conductor Charlotte Corderoy, soprano Amber Norelai is the young Vixen who escapes human capture, with soprano Jade Phoenix as the Fox. The Cunning Little Vixen opens in Siamsa Tíre Tralee on 31 January before embarking on a national tour until 22 February 2026.

Fresh from major successes in London, Berlin, Dresden and San Francisco, Irish soprano Jennifer Davis takes on the title role for Dvořák’s  Rusalka. Her performance in INO’s Faust (2023) was praised as “exquisite and vibrantly emotional” (Sunday Independent).  Fergus Sheil conducts and direction and design are by the visionary Netia Jones, who co-created and directed INO’s Olivier award nominated Least Like The Other, Searching for Rosemary Kennedy. Rusalka is a co-production with the Royal Swedish Opera and Nouvel Opéra Fribourg in association with Bord Gáis Energy Theatre and will have four performances for 22 – 28 March 2026.

The new season culminates with the greatest of all bel-canto operas Bellini’s Norma. Georgian soprano Salome Jicia is Norma, the high-priestess in love across the enemy lines, a tour de force role of vocal artistry made famous by Maria Callas, she sings the iconic aria Casta diva. Guatemalan tenor Mario Chang (La traviata 2024), described by the New York Times as “a born bel canto tenor” is Roman Proconsul Pollione. Norma is conducted by Italian maestro Maurizio Benini, a world-leading exponent of this opera. Much-loved INO collaborator Orpha Phelan (La bohème 2023, Don Pasquale 2022 & Cinderella 2019) returns to direct. Norma is in the Gaiety Theatre for three performances from 24 – 30 May, with one performance in the National Opera House, Wexford on 3 June and one in Cork Opera House on 6 June 2026.

August 2025 sees an outdoor screening of INO’s acclaimed production of Strauss’s Elektra (2021) starring soprano Giselle Allen, which was filmed on location in the Castle Yard, Kilkenny. Live performances in 2021 had covid-related limitations to numbers, now this extraordinarily powerful experience can reach a larger audience. Returning to the place where it was originally produced, this screening is part of Kilkenny Arts Festival on 12 and 13 August 2025.

The next generation step forward for another 2025-26 Season event, Music, Magic & Mischief. An INO Studio presentation that showcases rising stars of the Irish National Opera Studio takes to the road with Music, Magic & Mischief. A one-hour, staged performance of opera scenes that brings INO back to the Pavilion theatre in Dún Laoghaire, as well as taking us to new venues in Newcastle West, Clonmel, Nenagh and Balbriggan. Soprano Deirdre Higgins, mezzo-sopranos Leanne Fitzgerald and Olha Palazhchenko, tenor Cathal McCabe, and baritone David Kennedy form the ensemble cast and will present opera scenes directed by Grace Morgan and accompanied by Ella Nagy on piano.

We would like to thank The Arts Council, our principal funder, for their continued investment in opera. We also acknowledge a generous grant from the Laidlaw Opera Trust which supports the set of our forthcoming Madama Butterfly as well as our production of The Bartered Bride, which will tour to locations new to INO. Thank you also to the John Pollard Foundation with whom we have a multi-year partnership.