The National Concert Hall has cancelled a number of concerts due to Covid-19 cases among their orchestra.
The National Symphony Orchestra has seen a number of infections among their musicians which has led to the cancellations. Three events have been cancelled due to the infections - one last Friday and two this week.
Assumpta Lawless, who does communications work for the orchestra, told Today with Claire Byrne the cancelled shows came just as they were finding their feet after lockdown. She said: "It's particularly difficult because the summer lunchtime always draw a great crowd and a different crowd.
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"We were shaping up well, actually, for a very good audience having had a slow enough comeback. You could sense the weariness in people say a couple of months ago." An opera that was due to take place on Friday last week was also cancelled.
Assumpta said: "In addition, we had to cancel last Friday's concert performance of Lurline. It is an opera that is not often performed and a huge amount of work has gone into it with the support of the Arts Council."
They also had to cancel a screening of a documentary which was due to take place on Friday. Assumpta explained they had no option but to cancel the shows due to musicians and their replacements catching Covid-19.
She said: "It is basically in the orchestra team. We've been managing this all along [by] replacing people. There has been a natural of covid as you would expect in a pandemic and we have been able to manage it all along.
"But it has gotten to a level where the people we would have gone to as what we call deputies they too have covid. The replacements are getting covid.
"We've had a case where we brought somebody in to replace the player and then we them and we found they had Covid." Assumpta said the National Concert Hall plans to resume normal service next week.
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