The newly-founded Irish National Opera company (INO) continues its inaugural season with a new, full-scale production of one of the greatest comic operas ever written, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro directed by Tony award-winning Patrick Mason, a former artistic director of the Abbey Theatre.

To celebrate, we want to give one lucky GCN reader a pair of tickets for the Wednesday, April 18 show at 7.30pm in the Gaiety Theatre. Keep reading to find out how to enter!

Mozart’s comic tale of mayhem and mischief overlays serious issues of sexual politics that will resonate with everyone who has lived through the upheavals driven by the #MeToo campaign. In the opera, right wins out in the end. The young couple fights successfully against the darker intentions of Count Almaviva, who is sung by Northern Irish baritone Ben McAteer. Ben made his English National Opera debut in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe in February when Classical Source said his performance as Lord Mountararat “comes close to stealing the show with When Britain really ruled the waves”

The protective efforts of Susanna and Figaro are aided by Countess Almaviva, sung by soprano Máire Flavin. Máire has been described in The Guardian as having “a perfectly proportioned Mozartian voice, with a glittering upper register that suggests she may be the next singer ready to graduate to greater things.”

Soprano Aoife Miskelly, who was praised by The Telegraph last year for her “delightful singing” in the title role of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden for Opera North, takes on the role of Cherubino, the eager young page whose antics fuel many of the comic moments in The Marriage of Figaro.

The Irish National Opera Chorus and the Irish Chamber Orchestra are conducted by Ireland’s most rapidly-rising conductor, Peter Whelan, who took up his new post as artistic director of the Irish Baroque Orchestra in January, and will also conduct Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice for INO at the Galway International Arts Festival in July.

The 20th-century setting of Patrick Mason’s production is complemented by the stylish set and costumes of Francis O’Connor, the lighting design by Paul Keogan and the choreography of Muirne Bloomer. The Marriage of Figaro will have a single performance at the National Opera House in Wexford at 8 pm on Friday, April 13, and will run for four performances only at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre at 7.30pm on Tuesday, April 17, Wednesday 18, Friday 20 and Saturday 21. Tickets prices range from €15 to €86 and are available on irishnationalopera.ie

To win, answer the following question:

Patrick Mason is the former Artistic Director of which Dublin theatre?

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