Cork Opera House Emmett Place, Cork Phone: +353 21 427 4308 Email: info@corkoperahouse.ie Website: http://www.corkoperahouse.ie/

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Cork Opera House Today

Cork Opera House seeks to serve its city and surrounding region as a municipal theatre, offering its audiences a world class programme of events across all disciplines in the performing arts.

How big is Cork Opera House?

The Cork Opera House is the only purpose built opera house in the country, it includes:

* 1,000 seat auditorium and an orchestra pit that can hold 70 musicians
* One of the largest stages in Ireland measuring 12 x 10 meters with over 235 lights on the stage and an 80 foot fly tower, which accommodates up to 20 scenes changes in a performance
* The only Wi-Fi control Martin Line Array sound system in Ireland
* The Half Moon Theatre, a flexible studio space located to the rear of the main theatre, fosters a more experimental range of interdisciplinary projects, mixing drama with music and comedy

Who Owns Cork Opera House?

Cork Opera House is a non-profit company with charitable status, a PLC with the majority of shares owned by the people of Cork under the Cork Theatre Trust which is controlled by the Lord Mayor, the President of the Chamber of Commerce and the President of UCC among others.

Who supports Cork Opera House?

* Our patrons - last year 224,000 people attended 544 performances
* Cork Opera House earned 97% of its annual turnover of €6.4m in 2004
* A sole revenue grant from the Arts Council (€190k) which represents 3% of turnover
* In-house fundraising represents over 6% of annual turnover
* Last year Cork Opera House contributed €630k net back to the exchequer and paid €370k in royalties and performing rights back to copyrighted artists.

Who funded the building works of recent years?

* Cork City Council & Cork County Council contributed 43% towards
capital works amounting to €8m
* Central Government contributed 30% towards Capital Works
* Cork Opera House fundraising contributed 27% towards Capital Works. Cumulatively since 2000, over €2,000,000 was raised from the private corporate sector

Who Runs Cork Opera House?
It is run by a management team who report to a board of board of 11 directors which consists of 4 directors representing the shareholders, 1 staff director and 6 directors appointed by Cork City Council. 45 permanent and parttime permanent staff work in the Opera House with up to 50 additional staff employed at peak periods.

Brief History of Cork Opera House

There has been a theatre on the present site of the Cork Opera House since 1855. The original structure was designed by Sir John Benson and had been constructed as a Fine Arts Hall for the National Exhibition for Ireland in 1852 before being relocated stone by stone to the site of the old Custom Building in Nelson Square. First named the Athenaeum, then the Munster Hall and, finally, the Opera House, it stood for one hundred years until it was destroyed in a fire in 1955.

Following a ten year fund-raising campaign, a modern 1,000 seat Opera House was designed by Scott Tallon Walker and rebuilt on the same site in the renamed Emmet Place. In 1993 the present Board of Directors ran an architectural Concept Competition under the auspices of the R.I.A.I. which awarded the prize to Murray O' Laoire Associates for an entry which the judges described as "a vision of the building which takes the architecture of Cork City into the 21st century".

In the intervening seven years, the company has sought to realise the original vision of the building in spending approximately £6.2m on developing the Half Moon Theatre and addressing the east and north elevations of the building. Major work has also been achieved in the area of health and safety by overhauling the mechanical and electrical systems of the building in line with legislation introduced since its opening in 1965.