About NI Opera

Generously supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, NI Opera is a new organisation dedicated to the highest possible standards of operatic excellence, Northern Ireland-wide.

Through an ambitious and imaginative programme of productions and performances, NI Opera provides high-quality opera, promotes young Northern Irish talent, and aims to broaden the audience for the total art form that famously combines exciting stories, big spectacle, and great music.

Our Mission

NI Opera, based at the historic Grand Opera House, has a mission to provide the highest-quality opera to the widest possible audience. With a philosophy of excellence and risk-taking underpinned by an imaginative programming policy and first-rate casting, NI Opera is committed to opera as a unique art-form.

By keeping ticket-prices affordable and through the regular (but not exclusive) use of English in performance, we are committed to widening the audience for opera: everyone will be welcome to our productions, from young to old, rich to poor, and from the traditional opera-goer to someone who has never seen an opera in their life before.

NI Opera aims to promote the finest NI talent available, engaging with local communities and young people, collaborating with other NI arts organisations, and using some of Northern Ireland's most iconic spaces for its performances: truly this will be a company for and of its region. And we believe that a regional opera company does not have to be provincial. In the coming years we plan collaborations with UK and European opera companies - and organisations even further afield.

Oliver Mears, Artistic Director

After gaining a First in English and History at Lincoln College, Oxford, Oliver began his career assisting playwright Howard Barker, before going on to work at the Kings Head, Islington (directing productions of Judith, Creditors and The Lesson) and in opera, working on productions in London (ENO, ROH), Leeds, Milan, Copenhagen, Tokyo, and Basel.

As Artistic Director of Second Movement Opera, Oliver directed many site-specific opera productions in London, including works by Mozart, Bernstein, Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich/Fleischmann, Barber, the world premiere of Stefan Weisman's new opera Fade, and in 2010 a tour of Martinu's The Knife's Tears which travelled to Brno and Prague in the Czech Republic.

He has also directed a prison project with lifers, Sweeney Todd (HMP Kingston/Pimlico Opera), La Calisto (Iford Festival/Early Opera Company), Hansel and Gretel (Opera North), the National Opera Studio Showcase 2010, The Bear (National Reisopera, Holland), My Brother's Keeper (Edinburgh/Pleasance), and David Almond's play My Dad's a Birdman, a critically-acclaimed Christmas show with original music by Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe (Young Vic). His recent productions include Tosca (NI Opera, 2011, ITTA Nominated 'Best Opera Production'), Orpheus in the Underworld (Scottish Opera / NI Opera, 2011), Albert Herring (Aldeburgh, 2011), and Hansel and Gretel (NI Opera, 2011). In 2012 he will be directing Britten's operas The Turn of the Screw and Noye's Fludde, both for NI Opera.