Founding and operations (1979–2023) The company was founded in the late 1970s by opera tenor
Garðar Cortes, father of tenor
Garðar Thór Cortes. He remained artistic director until Ólöf Kolbrún Harðardóttir, also an opera singer, took over in 1992. Steinunn Birna Ragnarsdóttir was appointed the new director of the company in April 2015. The company's first performance was
Leoncavallo's
Pagliacci in March1979. Since then, the company had performed classics by Mozart, Rossini, Bizet, Verdi, Puccini and others. For the first 30 years of its existence, the organization performed in the cinema on Ingólfsstræti in downtown Reykjavík. The new organization,
Icelandic National Opera, is currently set to launch at the Harpa concert hall in 2026 as a division of the
National Theatre of Iceland. == References ==