At A Loss Programme Book

FERGUS SHEIL
CONDUCTOR
Fergus is the founding artistic
director of Irish National Opera
and has also worked for all
major Irish opera companies. He
has conducted a wide-ranging
repertoire of 35 different operas.
Highlights include Verdi’s Aida, Brian Irvine and
Netia Jones’s Least Like The Other – Searching for
Rosemary Kennedy and Rossini’s La Cenerentola
(Irish National Opera), Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde,
John Adams’s Nixon in China, Rossini’s The Barber
of Seville (Wide Open Opera), Mozart’s Don Giovanni
and, in 2017, Robert O’Dwyer’s Irish-language
opera, Eithne (Opera Theatre Company), the
first modern performance of the work, which was
subsequently recorded and issued on CD by RTÉ
lyric fm. In the orchestral field he has appeared with
the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra,
the Irish Chamber Orchestra and other orchestras
at home and abroad. He has toured the RTÉ
National Symphony Orchestra throughout Ireland
in Beethoven’s Choral Symphony and Mahler’s
Resurrection Symphony. As a choral conductor he
has worked with the State Choir Latvija (giving the
world premiere of Arvo Pärt’s The Deer’s Cry) and
the BBC Singers. Internationally he has fulfilled
engagements in the USA, Canada, South Africa,
Australia, the UK, France, Netherlands, Denmark,
Sweden, Malta and Estonia. Before founding Irish
National Opera he led both Wide Open Opera
(which he founded in 2012) and Opera Theatre
Company. Since 2011 he has been responsible for
the production of 37 different operas, which have
been seen around Ireland as well as internationally
in London, Edinburgh, New York, Amsterdam and
Luxembourg.
SARAH BACON
PRODUCTION DESIGNER
Sarah trained at the Motley Theatre
Design Course in London, having
previously studied architecture at
University College Dublin. In 2009
she was a Linbury Prize finalist at
the National Theatre, London. She
designs for theatre, opera, dance and film. Recent
theatre designs (set and costume) include Beginning/
The Children, ASSASSINS (the Gate Theatre), City
Song, Anna Karenina, The Shadow of a Gunman
(winner of the 2016 Irish Times Irish Theatre Award
for best set design, and also nominated for best
costume design; Abbey Theatre), Tina’s Idea of Fun
(Peacock Theatre), Melt, The Effect, Everything
Between Us (Rough Magic), The Water Orchard
(Collapsing Horse) and costume designs for The
Rehearsal, Playing The Dane and The Patient Gloria
(Pan Pan Theatre). Designs for opera include Cilea’s
L’Arlesiana (Wexford Festival Opera and Teatro
Pergolesi, Jesi), Bizet’s La Tragédie de Carmen (best
opera nomination, Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards
2008), Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Richard Wargo’s
Losers, Balfe’s The Sleeping Queen, Puccini’s Suor
Angelica, La Tragédie de Carmen, Donizetti’s Rita,
Poulenc’s La Voix humaine (Wexford Festival Opera
ShortWorks), Handel’s Xerxes, and La Tragédie de
Carmen (English Touring Opera), Matt Rogers’s
The Raven, Philip Glass’s Les Enfants Terribles (UK
premiere), Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia (Grimeborn
@ Arcola Theatre), Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito
and Carisle Floyd’s Susannah (Hampstead Garden
Opera), and Xerxes (Opera Theatre Company).
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