Cork Midsummer and Opera House summer musical cancelled due to virus

The 2020 Cork Midsummer Festival and Cork Opera House's summer musical are the latest events to be cancelled due to the coronavirus.

Cork Midsummer was due to take place in June, while the Opera House's production of 'Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang' was scheduled to run over six weeks in July and August 2020.

Cork Opera House confirmed the cancellation of the musical as current restrictions were causing problems for planned auditions and rehearsals for the show. It is hoped it may run in 2021 instead.

Eibhín Gleeson, Cork Opera House CEO, said: "We have been unable to hold our planned auditions and it looks increasingly unlikely that we will be able to bring people together for rehearsals as planned in the coming weeks.

"This production was a big event on our horizon; the show was providing employment for up to 100 artists and was going to play to tens of thousands of patrons over the summer. However, in the interests of public safety, we know that this is the right decision at this time."

Meanwhile, the organisers of Cork Midsummer also confirmed the 2020 edition of the festival will not go ahead. It was due to take place in June and included a mix of theatre, live music and arts programming.

"In light of the current Covid-19 situation, we have reluctantly accepted that it is not possible for us to continue with plans for the festival without potential risk to the health and safety of our artists, teams and audiences," Lorraine Maye, director of Cork Midsummer, said.

"We had a beautiful festival planned for you this year and we want to thank our artists and creative partners in the city and beyond for the huge amount of inspiring work that has been done on festival events to date, and to all of our funders, friends, patrons and sponsors for their extraordinary support through such challenging times.

"The festival as we planned it may not be happening but we will be working with our artists over the coming weeks and months to try to bring some of their brilliant work to you in other ways."

A handful of events had been announced for this year's programme. This included the Cork Proms, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's 'To the Lighthouse', and a number of live music events at St Luke's Church, including Kate Tempest, Weyes Blood, and Peggy Seeger.

Ticketholders for any of the events announced to date will be contacted in "the next couple of weeks regarding show rescheduling and refunds", Ms Maye added.

These are the latest in a series of events curtailed or cancelled due to the virus.

Among the others affected are It Takes a Village, the music festival which was scheduled to take place in Trabolgan in May, while the July events for the Cork 300 celebration have been cancelled.

The Cork Harbour Festival and Ocean to City race have both been postponed to 2021, when they will coincide with SeaFest 2021, which was due to take place in May of this year, while Cork's staging of European Maritime Day has also been postponed from 2020 to 2021.