• La Bohème @ Carlisle Memorial Church, Belfast

    “Love, alone command me!” The venue for Northern Ireland Opera’s comeback opera after eighteen months of Covid-19-inflicted anxiety, lockdown and isolation was different – an abandoned 19th century church, as opposed to the Grand Opera House. The socially distanced crowd in this former place of worship was small – ninety instead of the usual thousand that typically pack Belfast’s opera house. But one thing had not changed in the interminable, surreal interim – NI Opera’s capacity to deliver a world class show. Giacomo Puccini’s enduringly popular La Bohème may have seemed like a safe bet for the full-scale debut of…

  • Red Bull and AVA Team Up For Special Max Cooper AV Show

    Red Bull and AVA have teamed up to host a special performance by London-based Belfast producer Max Cooper. Streamed from Carlisle Memorial Church in Belfast, the homecoming performance will see Cooper bring a new AV show to the high Victorian, neo-gothic style building. Doubling up as the first electronic performance in the venue, the event will be available to AVA’s online community for free on Wednesday, November 18 at 8pm via YouTube, Facebook and the AVA website. Sarah McBriar, Creative Director of AVA said, ‘After stepping inside the building in 2015, we knew we wanted to bring a part of AVA to Carlisle…