Gaiety Theatre, Dublin Thurs 11th-Sun 21st 8pm 25-150 1890-673727

Opera Ireland, the one-time Dublin Grand Opera Society, has come to the end of the line. Its last production will be Tosca, directed by Jakob Peters-Messer and conducted by Gianluca Martinenghi, with sets by Markus Meyer and costumes by Sven Bindsell, which opens at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre on Thursday. Opera Ireland’s functions are being taken over by the new Irish National Opera company, which will not be offering its first productions until 2012.

These are difficult times for opera in Ireland, just as they were in 1941, when the DGOS was founded. As The Irish Timescommented at the time: "Although we may go short of tea and petrol in the city, we shall not, it seems, go short of song. The people of Dublin, who in time of peace patronise all the touring operatic and musical companies which come to our shores, in the absence of these companies have formed their own musical societies."

While petrol and tea can now be had in abundance, opera productions are rarer than they were in wartime. But Opera Ireland is showing unusual enterprise by casting two Irish sopranos, Orla Boylan (above, with Mercelo Puento as Cavaradossi) and Cara O’Sullivan, in the alternating role of Tosca. That idea came unstuck late in the day, when OSullivan suffered an injury, and her place has now been taken by Italian soprano, Amarilli Nizza. And the company has, unusually, added a seventh night to the originally planned run of six.