INO Friday Opera Explorer

FRIDAY 

PERA 

EXPLORER

IRISH NATIONAL OPERA 

PRINCIPAL FUNDER 

CORPORATE 

PARTNER 

FRIDAY 

OPERA 

EXPLORER 

AN IRISH NATIONAL OPERA PRODUCTION 

30 ARIAS 

17 COMPOSERS 

10 SINGERS 

5 WEEKLY EPISODES 

5 COMPOSER INTERVIEWS 

Filmed in Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin. Goethe-Institut Dublin. INO 

Offices Dublin. 

Available for free download 

Irish National Opera Facebook 

Irish National Opera YouTube 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

Goethe-Institut Dublin. Stephen Faloon, Claire Whelan and all at 

Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. 

PROGRAMME 1 FRIDAY 30 APRIL 2021 FROM 5PM 

PROGRAMME 2 FRIDAY 7 MAY 2021 FROM 5PM 




Cover image: Sarah Shine at Bord Gáis 

Energy Theatre. Photo: Ste Murray 

03

PROGRAMME 1 

FRIDAY 30 APRIL 

FROM 5PM 

ITALY 

Arias from Bellini’s I puritani, La sonnambula and 

Norma, and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor 

Sung by Claudia Boyle, Naomi Louisa O’Connell, 

Gyula Nagy, John Molloy. 

Composer interview with Gerald Barry. 

PAGE 08 

PROGRAMME 2 

FRIDAY 7 MAY 

FROM 5PM 

GERMANY 

PROGRAMME 3 

FRIDAY 14 MAY 

FROM 5PM 

FRANCE 

PROGRAMME 4 

FRIDAY 21 MAY 

FROM 5PM 

RUSSIA 

PROGRAMME 5 

FRIDAY 28 MAY 

FROM 5PM 

GERMANY 

Arias from Beethoven’s Fidelio, and Wagner’s 

Das Rheingold and Tannhäuser. 

Sung by Sinéad Campbell Wallace, Brenton Ryan, 

Ben McAteer, Gyula Nagy, John Molloy. 

Composer interview with Emma O’Halloran. 

Arias from Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust, 

Gounod’s Faust and Roméo et Juliette, and 

Massenet’s Cendrillon and Werther. 

Sung by Sarah Shine, Gemma Ní Bhriain, 

Naomi Louisa O’Connell, Gavan Ring, John Molloy. 

Composer interview with Finola Merivale. 

Arias from Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden, 

Borodin’s Prince Igor, and Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta 

and Eugene Onegin. 

Sung by Claudia Boyle, Sarah Shine, Gavan Ring, 

Brenton Ryan, Ben McAteer, Gyula Nagy. 

Composer interview with Jennifer Walshe. 

Arias from Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, 

Elektra and Ariadne auf Naxos. 

Sung by Sinéad Campbell Wallace, Sarah Shine, 

Naomi Louisa O’Connell, Gemma Ní Bhriain, 

Gavan Ring, Brenton Ryan. 

Composer interview with Amanda Feery. 

PAGE 12 

PAGE 18 

PAGE 26 

PAGE 34 

FRIDAY 

MUSICIANS 

Pianists 

Gary Beecher 

Aoife O’Sullivan 

PERA 

Image: Sarah Shine at Bord Gáis 

Energy Theatre with Gary Beecher, 

piano. Photo: Ste Murray 

EXPLORER 

PRODUCTION 

Video Production 

Gansee Films 

Audio Production 

Ergodos 

Stream Technician 

David Brandt 

ADDITIONAL THANKS 

Production Photographs 

Kip Carroll 

Ste Murray 

Graphic Design 

Alphabet Soup 

Programme edited by 

Michael Dervan 

04 

05

WELCOME NOTE 

FERGUS SHEIL 

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR 

Welcome to Irish National Opera’s Friday Opera Explorer, five weekly 

programmes specially recorded with top artists, filmed in places you 

might not have heard them before – the foyer of the Bord Gáis Energy 

Theatre, the Goethe-Intitut in Dublin, and the INO offices in Dame Street. 

It’s been a difficult 13 months for all of us in so many different ways. 

In the performing arts we have faced insurmountable problems 

connecting with live audiences, save for an all-too-brief gap last 

summer. Here in INO we have been challenged to create new 

online outlets through which performers and composers can still 

manage to reach you, our audience, and keep the spirit of opera 

alive and healthy. The biggest single venture was our large-scale 

commissioning project late last year, 20 Shots of Opera, for which 

we commissioned, rehearsed, filmed, edited and released online 

20 new works in a period of six months. We are over the moon at 

the positive response we’ve received from public and press at 

home and abroad. It’s not every day of the week you get praised 

for “exemplary lockdown music-making” in a five-star review in 

The Observer, or patted on the back by Germany’s Frankfurter 

Allgemeine Zeitung for “an impressive creative statement about and 

against the cultural restrictions of this terrible pandemic – and a 

pleasure to watch”. 20 Shots of Opera are currently available on our 

YouTube channel and at www.operavision.eu 

We’re chomping at the bit to get back on stage in front of you, which 

we fervently hope to be able to do before the year is out. And in the 

meantime we are working on films of Peter Maxwell Davies’s The 

Lighthouse, Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground and 

Amanda Feery’s new opera A Thing I Cannot Name, with a libretto 

by Megan Nolan, which you will be able to access on our website 

and beyond in the coming months. 

Arias from composers and operas which feature in our future plans 

have made their way into the Friday Opera Explorer programmes as 

well as singers you can expect to see on our stages before too long. 

And there are also interviews with living composers whose work 

features in upcoming productions. 

The Friday Opera Explorer programmes each focus on different areas of 

the operatic repertoire and the composers we have chosen represent a 

wide range of operatic style and national traditions – Beethoven, Berlioz, 

Bellini, Donizetti, Wagner, Gounod, Massenet, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, 

Rimsky Korsakov, Borodin and Strauss. What they have in common is 

the fact that they are all awaiting their first staged production from INO. 

So the series can be regarded as a taster menu of future pleasures. 

Opera of the present and the future are an important concern, too. 

And Friday Opera Explorer will feature five interviews with composers 

whose work we will present in coming seasons – Gerald Barry, 

Amanda Feery, Finola Merivale, Emma O’Halloran and Jennifer 

Walshe. Each week one of the five will chat to me and we will have 

an opportunity to hear some of their work. Finola Merivale’s Out of 

the Ordinary, a new virtual reality community opera scheduled for 

performance next year, has already been shorlisted for this year’s 

Fedora Opera digital prize. Keep your fingers crossed. 

Friday Opera Explorer covers opera and composers old and new and 

will keep you connected to the rich artistic family of Irish operatic talent 

without which our work at Irish National Opera would be impossible. 

Enjoy the performances, and don’t forget to let us know what you 

think on any of our social channels. 

FERGUS SHEIL 

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR 

06 

07

30 APRIL 2021 

PROGRAMME 1 

ITALY 

Claudia Boyle 

Naomi Louisa O’Connell 

Gyula Nagy 

John Molloy 

Gary Beecher 


Soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Baritone 

Bass 

Piano 

Piano 

VINCENZO BELLINI 

1801-35 

Bellini was born into a family of musicians in 

Sicily, trained in Naples and hit the big time 

at the age of 25 with Il pirata, his first opera 

for Milan’s Teatro alla Scala. In his career 

he stuck to composition to make a living – 

no teaching or administrative posts – and 

in his music he eschewed vocal fireworks 

for an expressive, often plaintive style, that 

he made completely his own. In March 

1830 he was able to write, “My style is now 

heard in the most important theatres in the 

world... and with the greatest enthusiasm.” 

Five years and four operas later he was 

dead from colitis complicated by a liver 

abscess. He was admired by Chopin 

(a kindred musical spirit) and Wagner 

(a man of completely different cast). And 

Rossini credited him with “a most beautiful, 

exquisitely humane soul”. I puritani (The 

Puritans), his last opera, was first performed 

in Paris in January 1835, nine months 

before his death. 

I PURITANI (THE PURITANS) 1835 

O rendetemi la speme... Qui la voce sua soave 

(Oh, let me hope again... Here his sweet voice) ACT II 

CLAUDIA BOYLE, AOIFE O’SULLIVAN INO OFFICES 

The opera is set during the English Civil War, which allows for the classic operatic scenario of love 

that thrives, Romeo and Juliet-like, across a warring divide. In this case Elvira, a Puritan, loves Arturo, 

a Royalist. There is not just another man on the scene, but also an imprisoned Queen, whose escape 

in disguise is aided by Arturo. Elvira believes that he has betrayed her and loses her mind. Just before 

this Act II aria she declares, offstage, “Either give me back hope, or let me die”. The stage directions 

are for her to enter “dishevelled,” adding that “Her face, her expression and every step she takes, 

show her madness.” She then poignantly recalls “his sweet voice” and dwells on better times. 

LA SONNAMBULA (THE SLEEPWALKER) 1831 

Vi ravviso, o luoghi ameni (O lovely scenes, again I see you) ACT I 

JOHN MOLLOY, AOIFE O’SULLIVAN BORD GÁIS ENERGY THEATRE 

A Swiss village wedding for the well-off farmer Elvino and the attractive orphan Amina. A stranger in 

town who seems to know too much – he’s actually Rodolfo, the long-lost heir to the local castle. Add 

in some jealousy and envy, and a ghost who is none other than the sleep-walking Amina, and you’ve 

got the key elements in an opera that ultimately finds its heroine rescued from the brink of disaster. 

Literally, as she sleepwalks along a dangerous ledge. In this Act I aria Roldofo expresses his pleasure 

as he re-acquaints himself with a place that is steeped in happy memories from his youth. 

NORMA 1831 

Sgombra è la sacra selva (The sacred wood is empty) ACT I 

NAOMI LOUISA O’CONNELL, AOIFE O’SULLIVAN GOETHE-INSTITUT 

Gauls, Romans, druids. Norma, a high priestess driven to the brink of infanticide. The sisterly solidarity 

that she comes to share with Adalgisa, her rival in love. And a man in the middle who rises with nobility 

to the ultimate sacrifice. In this Act I aria, as Adalgisa finds herself alone, she contemplates her desire 

for the “fatal Roman” whose love made her “a traitor”. “Protect me, God,” she sings, “for I am lost”. 

08 

09

30 APRIL 2021 

Image: Claudia Boyle at the 

Goethe-Institut Dublin 

Photo: Kip Carroll 

PROGRAMME 1 

ITALY 

CONTINUED. 

GAETANO DONIZETTI 

1797-1848 

Claudia Boyle 


Gyula Nagy 

John Molloy 

Gary Beecher 


Soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Baritone 

Bass 

Piano 

Piano 

Bergamo-born Gaetano Donizetti wrote 

his first opera at the age of 19. By the 

time of his death, 31 years later, he had 

written over 60 more. By 1827, the year he 

turned 30, he was in a position to take on a 

contract to provide four new operas a year 

for three years. Such was the profusion and 

popularity of his output that, during the last 

ten years of his life, one in every four opera 

performances in Italy was of a work by him. 

His name has long been synonymous with 

bel canto – literally, beautiful singing. He is 

the most-performed composer at Wexford 

Festival Opera, and in the annals of opera 

in 20th-century Dublin his most frequently 

staged work was Lucia di Lammermoor, 

based on one of Walter Scott’s Waverley 

novels, The Bride of Lammermoor. It had 

its Irish premiere in Dublin in 1846, and it 

followed productions in Dublin of Betly, Il 

campanello, L’elisir d’amore and Torquato 

Tasso (all in 1838), Anna Bolena (1840) 

and Don Pasquale (1844). 

LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR 1835 

Cruda, funesta smania 

(A cruel, deadly frenzy) ACT I 

GYULA NAGY, GARY BEECHER GOETHE-INSTITUT 

Thwarted and forced marriages are not just a matter of the long-distant past, as fans of The Crown 

will knowledgeably attest. In Lucia di Lammermoor, the heroine is in love with Edgardo. But in order 

to protect the fortunes of her brother, Enrico, Lucia is being asked to marry someone else. 

In this Act I aria Enrico fully embraces his darker side as he rages at the way his plans are being thwarted. 

Regnava nel silenzio 

(Enveloped in silence) ACT I 


Lucia and her companion Alisa are at a fountain in the woods, waiting for Edgardo. Lucia reveals that 

at this very fountain someone from Edgardo’s wider family had been so driven by jealousy that he 

stabbed and killed a girl. And she herself has seen the girl’s ghost, seeming to call to her. 

10 

11

7 MAY 2021 

PROGRAMME 2 

GERMANY 

Sinéad Campbell Wallace Soprano 

Brenton Ryan 

Ben McAteer 

Gyula Nagy 

John Molloy 

Gary Beecher 


Tenor 

Baritone 

Baritone 

Bass 

Piano 

Piano 

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN 

1770-1827 

A hundred years ago Pears’ Cyclopaedia, 

a 1,000-page-plus Wikipedia of its day, 

said in its entry for operas that, “The 

leading opera composers of the 19th 

century were Beethoven, Rossini, Weber, 

Donizetti, Auber, Verdi, Meyerbeer, Gounod 

and Wagner”. The choice of names has 

not dated well, even in the fact that it’s 

headed by the greatest composer in the 

list, but one who left just a single opera. 

The decade or so over which Beethoven 

worked on the opera we know as Fidelio 

yielded a number of versions, now 

best remembered through the series 

of overtures spawned by the revisions, 

overtures which hold a place in the concert 

hall to this day. The composer declared 

that revising the final version of his opera 

highlighting issues of justice and freedom 

was more difficult than writing a new one 

would have been. The opera was originally 

titled Leonore, oder Der Triumph der 

ehelichen Liebe – Leonore or The Triumph 

of Marital Love. Beethoven preferred the 

original name to the now familiar one. 

FIDELIO 1805 

Ha! Welch ein Augenblick! 

(Ha! What a moment!) ACT I 

GYULA NAGY, GARY BEECHER BORD GÁIS ENERGY THEATRE 

Florestan, a freedom fighter, is imprisoned by his enemy, Don Pizarro, a corrupt prison governor. 

Unknown to either of them, Florestan’s wife Leonore has disguised herself as a man under the name 

Fidelio and found work as assistant to the jailer Rocco. Her goal is the liberation of her husband, who 

is chained in a remote dungeon where he is intentionally poorly fed. Pizarro receives a tip-off about 

a surprise visit from the Minister Ferrando and sees this as an opportunity. In a vengeful aria he 

decides that Florestan must die. 

Abscheulicher! Wo eilst du hin?... Komm, Hoffnung 

(Loathsome monster! Where are you scurrying?... Come, Hope) ACT I 

SINÉAD CAMPBELL WALLACE, AOIFE O’SULLIVAN GOETHE-INSTITUT 

Fidelio, ie Leonore, has overheard the plot for a trumpeter on the ramparts to sound a warning 

fanfare for Pizarro on the first sighting of the Minister. She powerfully traverses the emotional gulf 

between revulsion and hope as she contemplates the appalling situation she is confronted with. 

12 

13

7 MAY 2021 

PROGRAMME 2 

GERMANY 

CONTINUED. 


Brenton Ryan 

Ben McAteer 

Gyula Nagy 

John Molloy 

Gary Beecher 


Tenor 

Baritone 

Baritone 

Bass 

Piano 

Piano 

RICHARD WAGNER 

1813-83 

Wagner was and is a huge figure to be 

influenced by, or react against, and his 

work helped shape some of the most 

important harmonic developments of 

early 20th-century music. He also posited 

the idea of opera as a Gesamtkunstwerk 

or total artwork, and in the opera house 

he designed at Bayreuth in Bavaria he 

created a temple where its glorification is 

still celebrated. In the late 19th and early 

20th centuries he came to dominate the 

world not just of opera but also of orchestral 

music – concerts, including the early Henry 

Wood Proms, featured whole evenings 

of orchestral excerpts from his work. His 

magnum opus, the four-part Das Ring der 

Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) – 

Das Rheingold, Siegfried, Die Walküre and 

Götterdämmerung, about 14 hours of music 

in total – conjures up a world of implacable 

force and tragedy. In 1993 The Viking Opera 

Guide described it as “the biggest work 

in the history of Western music”. Its scale 

would be fully eclipsed only when Karlheinz 

Stockhausen completed his seven-day, 29- 

hour opera cycle, Licht (Light), in 2003. 

DAS RHEINGOLD (THE RHINEGOLD) 1869 

The 150-minute, one-act Das Rheingold opens in the depths of the Rhine where the power-lusting 

Nibelung, Alberich, steals the gold that can be made into an all-power-bestowing ring. But he is 

tricked by Wotan, ruler of the gods and, after Wotan has taken the ring and the gold, Alberich places 

a fatal curse on the ring. Wotan uses his plunder to settle with Fafner and Fasolt, the giants who built 

his new castle, Valhalla. He wants to avoid having to keep his original promise to give them his sisterin-law 

Freia as payment. 

Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge 

(The sun’s eye sheds its evening beams) 


Towards the close of the opera, with the new castle appearing through the clouds, Wotan sings as he 

leads the gods across a rainbow bridge into Valhalla. 

Immer ist Undank Loges Lohn! 

(Ungratitude is always Loge’s lot!) 

BRENTON RYAN, GARY BEECHER GOETHE-INSTITUT 

Earlier in the opera, when Wotan was under pressure to give the giants their payment, he turned for 

help to Loge, the god of fire. It is Loge, a bit of a shyster, who was behind the idea of offering Freia as 

payment, a promise that was never intended to be kept. Under pressure from Wotan he points to his 

achievements and complains about how little appreciation he receives. 

14 

15

7 MAY 2021 

PROGRAMME 2 

GERMANY 

CONTINUED. 


Brenton Ryan 

Ben McAteer 

Gyula Nagy 

John Molloy 

Gary Beecher 


Tenor 

Baritone 

Baritone 

Bass 

Piano 

Piano 

TANNHÄUSER 1845 

O du mein holder Abendstern 

(Oh thou, my gracious evening star) ACT III 

BEN McATEER, AOIFE O’SULLIVAN BORD GÁIS ENERGY THEATRE 

This opera’s full title is Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg (Tannhäuser and the 

Minnesingers’ Contest at Wartburg), a useful indication that it is a blending of two German legends. 

Tannhäuser is a minnesinger, a poet-musician, in medieval Germany. He has been under the spell 

of Venus in a subterranean grotto under the Venusberg. He hankers to be released but when Venus 

sets him free she places a curse on him. The plot of the opera hinges on Tannhäuser’s relationships 

with Elisabeth (ultimately a failure, in spite of a pilgrimage to Rome) and the knight and minnesinger 

Wolfram von Eschenbach (who is also in love with Elisabeth). In the third act, after Elisabeth has 

prayed to be released from life, Wolfram asks the evening star to salute her as she soars from earth to 

become an angel. 

Dich, teure Halle, grüß ich wieder 

(Dear hall, I greet thee once again) ACT II 


In Act II, during an earlier and happier time, Elisabeth entered the Minstrels’ Hall in the Wartburg, 

the castle of the Landgrave of Thuringia, and sang of the joy of seeing Tannhäuser again in the place 

where she had first met him. 

Image: Ben McAteer at 

Bord Gáis Energy Theatre 


16 

17

14 MAY 2021 

Image: Gemma Ní Bhriain at 

Bord Gáis Energy Theatre 


PROGRAMME 3 

FRANCE 

HECTOR BERLIOZ 

1803-69 

Sarah Shine 

Gemma Ní Bhriain 


Gavan Ring 

John Molloy 

Gary Beecher 


Soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Tenor 

Bass 

Piano 

Piano 

Berlioz is one of the few composers not 

to have been proficient on the piano. He 

played flageolet, flute and guitar. He saw 

the situation as being to his advantage and, 

as he colourfully remarked in his Memoirs, 

“Can anyone fail to recognize in this 

judicious choice the hand of Nature urging 

me towards the grandest orchestral effects 

and the Michelangelesque in music?” 

He certainly never felt himself bound 

by musical convention. His reading of 

Goethe’s Faust in the late 1820s inspired 

him to write Eight Scenes from Faust, only 

part of which would ever be performed 

during his lifetime. He started revising this 

early work in the 1840s, and had the idea 

of turning it into an “opéra de concert,” an 

opera without decor or costumes. What he 

ended up with was La damnation de Faust, 

a four-part “légende dramatique ” for the 

concert hall. The operatic connection was 

fully activated in 1893, when it was staged 

as an opera in Monte Carlo with the title 

role taken by the great Polish tenor Jean de 

Reszke (1850-1925), teacher of the late 

Veronica Dunne’s teacher, Hubert Rooney. 

LA DAMNATION DE FAUST 1846 

D’amour l’ardente flamme 

(The burning flame of love) PART IV 

GEMMA NÍ BHRIAIN, AOIFE O’SULLIVAN BORD GÁIS ENERGY THEATRE 

Faust has fallen under the spell of Mephistopheles and, after dreaming of Marguerite, his wishes 

are fulfilled and he spends a night with her. But motherly and neighbourly intrusions mean he has to 

leave. Alone, Marguerite laments her fate. Without him, “all life seems in mourning”. 

18 

19

14 MAY 2021 

Image: John Molloy at Bord 

Gáis Energy Theatre 


PROGRAMME 3 

FRANCE 

CONTINUED. 

CHARLES GOUNOD 

1818-93 

Sarah Shine 



Gavan Ring 

John Molloy 

Gary Beecher 


Soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Tenor 

Bass 

Piano 

Piano 

As a student, when he won the Prix de 

Rome in 1839, Gounod used his time in 

Italy to study church music, especially the 

works of Palestrina. And at the other end 

of his career, he devoted the final decade 

of his life to sacred music. Not surprising 

for a man who had contemplated the 

priesthood and even studied theology for 

two years. It was in Rome, through reading 

Gérard de Nerval’s translation of the first 

part of Goethe’s Faust, that the seeds were 

sown for his greatest and most enduring 

success. His 1859 opera Faust carried 

his name around the world, even though 

the work still faces criticism for its strain 

of sentimentality and, in Germany, for the 

libretto’s treatment of Goethe’s revered 

text. Gounod achieved unexpected and 

anonymous fame in the mid 20th century, 

when arrangements of his Marche Funèbre 

d’une Marionnette (Funeral March of a 

Marionette) provided the theme tune for 

two of early television’s greatest shows, 

Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Alfred 

Hitchcock Hour. 

FAUST 1859 

Vous qui faites l’endormie 

(You who pretend to sleep) ACT IV 


Faust and Marguerite have fallen in love and she has borne him a child. Marguerite’s brother 

Valentin is back from war and Faust and Mephistopheles are in town, too. Mephistopheles sings 

this mocking serenade which includes the warning “Don’t grant any kisses, my pretty one, till the 

ring is on your finger!” 

20 

21

14 MAY 2021 

PROGRAMME 3 

FRANCE 

CONTINUED. 

Sarah Shine 



Gavan Ring 

John Molloy 

Gary Beecher 


Soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Tenor 

Bass 

Piano 

Piano 

JULES MASSENET 

1842-1912 

In a review of a 1903 revival of Werther 

Debussy called Massenet “that musical 

historian of the female soul”. And in his 

obituary of the composer he wrote, “His 

colleagues never forgave him for having 

such a power to please; it really was a 

gift.” The gift was supported by formidable 

theatrical understanding and a sure grasp 

of musical sensuality. Massenet lived into 

a 20th-century that knew the work of 

Strauss, Schoenberg and Stravinsky and 

he never managed to repeat the successes 

he had with Manon and Werther. The late 

20th-century revival of interest in his work 

was helped by a string of productions at 

Wexford Festival Opera. 

CENDRILLON (CINDERELLA) 1899 

Ah! Douce enfant 

(Ah! Dearest child) ACT I 

SARAH SHINE, GARY BEECHER BORD GÁIS ENERGY THEATRE 

Massenet’s Cendrillon in based on Charles Perrault’s identically-titled fairy-tale. Cendrillon’s 

stepmother, stepsisters Noémi and Dorothée, and father have abandoned her and set off to the ball. 

Alone, she falls asleep. She is visited by her fairy godmother who, in a coloratura aria, commands 

spirits and elves to create everything that will make Cendrillon the sensation of the evening when 

they dress her and take her to the ball in a magical carriage. 

WERTHER 1892 

Va! Laisse couler mes larmes 

(Yes! Let my tears flow) ACT III 


Goethe’s 1774 novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther) is the basis for 

Massenet’s Werther, a work which he finished in 1887 but didn’t see performed until after the success his 

earlier Manon achieved in Vienna in 1890. Werther’s misfortune is to fall in love with Charlotte, a woman 

already engaged to be married. In spite of her feelings for Werther she goes ahead with her wedding. 

Months later she realises that she still loves him, but she continues to reject him. He decides to take his 

own life and she confesses her love before he dies in her arms. This aria from the penultimate act finds 

her in confessional mode with her sister Sophie, suggesting it will be good to let her tears flow. 

Pourquoi me réveiller? 

(Why do you awaken me?) ACT III 

GAVAN RING, AOIFE O’SULLIVAN INO OFFICES 

Before Werther’s final act of desperation he shares time with Charlotte as they recall their earliest 

days together, which included reading translations of Ossian. He sings one to her to heighten the 

pleasure of the memories. 

22 

23

14 MAY 2021 

PROGRAMME 3 

FRANCE 

CONTINUED. 

Sarah Shine 



Gavan Ring 

John Molloy 

Gary Beecher 


Soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Tenor 

Bass 

Piano 

Piano 

ROMÉO ET JULIETTE 1867 

Que fais-tu, blanche tourterelle? 

(What are you doing, white turtle-dove?) ACT III 


On the morning that Friar Laurence marries Romeo and Juliet in secret, Romeo’s page Stephano 

is in search of his master who has been missing since the previous day. He improvises a song, 

pretending to strum on his sword as if it were a guitar, and asks: “What are you doing, white 

turtle-dove in this nest of vultures?” The vultures he has in mind are the members of the 

opposition, the house of Capulet. 

Ah! lève-toi, soleil! 

(Ah, arise, o sun!) ACT II 

GAVAN RING, AOIFE O’SULLIVAN INO OFFICES 

Romeo and Juliet have met, fallen in love, and agreed to marry, in spite of the trouble they know will 

ensue from the divide between their families. Romeo is consumed with his new love, and seeing a 

light come on in Juliet’s window, calls on the sun to rise and dim the stars. 

Image: Gavan Ring at the 



24 

25

21 MAY 2021 

Image: Sarah Shine at Bord 


Photo: Ste Murray 

PROGRAMME 4 

RUSSIA 

NIKOLAI RIMSKY- 

KORSAKOV 

1844-1908 

Claudia Boyle 

Sarah Shine 

Gavan Ring 

Brenton Ryan 

Ben McAteer 

Gyula Nagy 

Gary Beecher 


Soprano 

Soprano 

Tenor 

Tenor 

Baritone 

Baritone 

Piano 

Piano 

Although he started composing at the age of 

10, Rimsky-Korsakov began his professional 

career with a two-and-a-half-year military 

cruise at the age of 18 after he graduated 

as a midshipman from the College of Naval 

Cadets in St Petersburg. By the time he was 

21, through the mentoring of Balakirev, he 

was able to hear the public performance of his 

first symphony. Three years later he started 

work on his first opera, Pskovityanka (The 

Maid of Pskov), even though, he later claimed, 

he could still not “decently harmonise a 

chorale”. He went on to complete 15 operas, 

the best-known of which in the West is Zolotoy 

petushok (The Golden Cockerel, also known 

as Le coq d’or). His colourful and exotic 

orchestral style was highly influential both at 

home and abroad – Stravinsky was a pupil of 

his, Ravel an admirer. Snegurochka (The Snow 

Maiden) is described as a “springtime tale” 

and is based on a play by Ostrovsky. It was first 

performed in 1882, when the cast included 

Fyodor Stravinsky, father of the composer Igor. 

At its Irish premiere at the Wexford Festival in 

2008, it became the first work to be presented 

in the festival’s new opera house. 

SNEGUROCHKA (THE SNOW MAIDEN) 1882 

S podruzhkami po yagodu khodit 

(The Snow Maiden’s Aria) 

(Oh, to go gathering berries with my friends) PROLOGUE 


The Snow Maiden of the title is the love child of Spring Beauty and Father Frost, and her very 

existence has upset the sun god Yarilo, resulting in short summers and long winters. The Snow 

Maiden gets her wish to live among humans, and when her chilliness (she has no capacity for love) 

is finally overcome, nature rights itself once again. This aria from the Prologue is the Snow Maiden’s 

plea to be allowed live with humans and enjoy their songs and games. 

26 

27

21 MAY 2021 

Image: Gyula Nagy at Bord 



PROGRAMME 4 

RUSSIA 

CONTINUED. 

ALEXANDER BORODIN 

1833-87 

Claudia Boyle 

Sarah Shine 

Gavan Ring 

Brenton Ryan 

Ben McAteer 

Gyula Nagy 

Gary Beecher 


Soprano 

Soprano 

Tenor 

Tenor 

Baritone 

Baritone 

Piano 

Piano 

Alexander Borodin was a professional 

chemist and an amateur composer. At the 

age of 31 he was appointed Professor of 

Organic Chemistry at the Medico-Surgical 

Academy in St Petersburg. Composing was 

a spare-time activity. Yet his Second String 

Quartet, Second Symphony and symphonic 

sketch In the Steppes of Central Asia, as well 

as the overture and Polovtsian Dances from 

his sole opera, Prince Igor, are at the heart 

of the standard repertoire. The Viking Opera 

Guide regards the Polovtsian Dances as 

constituting “one of the most overwhelming 

scenes in all opera”. Not much music comes 

more immediately and attractively tuneful 

than these works of Borodin. Which makes 

it hardly surprising that his music became 

the basis of a Broadway musical, 1953’s 

Kismet; the musical itself was turned into a 

film two years later. Borodin never actually 

completed Prince Igor. Nikolai Rimsky- 

Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov worked 

on it after his death to give us the work as 

we know it today. 

PRINCE IGOR 1890 

Ni sna ni otdycha izmucennoj duse 

(Prince Igor’s Aria) 

(No sleep, no rest for my tormented soul!) ACT II 

GYULA NAGY, GARY BEECHER BORD GÁIS ENERGY THEATRE 

Prince Igor is based on the medieval epic, Slovo o polku Igoreve (The Lay of the Host of Igor), 

and is set in the 12th century. Igor Svyatoslavich, Prince of Seversk, is engaged an unsuccessful 

campaign against a nomadic tribe – the Polovtsians of the opera’s famous dances. Prince Igor’s 

Act II aria finds him in prison, “alone in the silence of the night,” reliving his past, and concluding 

“there is no escape for me”. 

28 

29

21 MAY 2021 

Image: Brenton Ryan at the 



PROGRAMME 4 

RUSSIA 

CONTINUED. 

MODEST MUSSORGSKY 

1839-1881 

Claudia Boyle 

Sarah Shine 

Gavan Ring 

Brenton Ryan 

Ben McAteer 

Gyula Nagy 

Gary Beecher 


Soprano 

Soprano 

Tenor 

Tenor 

Baritone 

Baritone 

Piano 

Piano 

Mussorgsky was born into wealth and 

Borodin who met him as a teenager called 

him “an elegant piano-playing dilettante”. 

But he gave up an army commission 

to focus on music and, although family 

misfortune forced him to earn a living as a 

civil servant, he developed one of the most 

original musical voices of his time. His 

magnum opus, the opera Boris Godunov, 

has had as troubled a fate as the composer 

himself, who died from alcoholism at the 

age of 42. There are multiple versions of 

Boris Godunov, not just from Mussorgsky 

himself, but also by other composers, some 

of whom with the best of intentions sought 

to iron out musical roughnesses which 

were intrinsic to Mussorgsky’s style. 

BORIS GODUNOV 1874/1896 

Tri dnja v Ugliče, v sobore 

(At the cathedral in Uglich) ACT II 


Boris Godunov has become Tsar of Russia by having Dimitri, the rightful heir, murdered. When a new 

pretender appears, claiming to be Dimitri, he seeks reassurance from the powerful boyar, Shuisky, 

that the murder actually took place. In this aria, Shuisky assures him that in the cathedral in Uglich 

he saw Dimitri’s body, “disfigured, in blood and dirty rags”. 

30 

31

21 MAY 2021 

PROGRAMME 4 

RUSSIA 

CONTINUED. 

Claudia Boyle 

Sarah Shine 

Gavan Ring 

Brenton Ryan 

Ben McAteer 

Gyula Nagy 

Gary Beecher 


Soprano 

Soprano 

Tenor 

Tenor 

Baritone 

Baritone 

Piano 

Piano 

PIOTR ILYICH 

TCHAIKOVSKY 

1840-93 

Tchaikovsky’s enthusiasm for Pushkin’s 

Eugene Onegin as the subject of an opera 

was boundless. He wrote to his brother, 

Modest, “You won’t believe how inflamed I 

am with this subject. How delighted I am to 

be rid of Ethiopian princesses, Pharaohs, 

poisonings, all that stilted stuff. What an 

infinity of poetry there is in Onegin. I am 

not deluding myself; I know that there 

will be little in the way of stage effects or 

movement in this opera. But the amount 

of poetry, humanity, simplicity in the 

subject, and a text of genius, will more 

than compensate for these deficiencies.” 

His instinct were spot on and Onegin 

remains his greatest opera. His final 

opera, Iolanta, was commissioned as a 

companion piece for The Nutcracker ballet, 

and was the more warmly received of the 

two works on the opening night. It is the 

only Friday Opera Explorer opera never to 

have received either a staged or concert 

performance in Ireland. 

IOLANTA 1892 

Atchevo eta prezhde ne znala 

(Why, until now, have I not shed tears?) ACT I 


Iolanta is a blind princess who has been brought up in a locked garden and never told she is blind. In 

the perfection of her controlled environment, weeping is the only function she associates with eyes. 

Why, she sings to Marta, her nursemaid, has she not shed tears, never known feelings of longing or 

sorrow? 

EUGENE ONEGIN 1879 

Kuda, kuda vï udalilis 

(Where, oh where have you gone?) ACT II 

GAVAN RING, AOIFE O’SULLIVAN GOETHE-INSTITUT 

The action opens with the friends Vladimir Lensky and Eugene Onegin visiting the Larin family. 

Lensky is engaged to one of their daughters, Olga. The other, Tatyana, falls in love with Onegin, but 

is rejected by him. Onegin’s subsequent flirtation with Olga upsets Lensky and the rift between the 

two men escalates to the point of a duel, in which Lensky is killed. On the morning of the duel Lensky 

laments his situation and sings of his love for Olga. 

Kogda bï zhizn domashnim krugom 

(If I had wished to pass my life) ACT I 

BEN McATEER, AOIFE O’SULLIVAN BORD GÁIS ENERGY THEATRE 

We move back to the previous act, when Tatyana has put her feelings for Onegin in a letter. He visits 

her to detail the reasons for his rejection, which include the claim that he was not made for wedded 

bliss, that he only loves her with a brother’s love, and he also callously suggests she should learn to 

control her feelings. 

32 

33

28 MAY 2021 

Image: Naomi Louise O’Connell at 

the Goethe-Institut Dublin 


PROGRAMME 5 

GERMANY 


Sarah Shine 



Gavan Ring 

Brenton Ryan 

Gary Beecher 


Soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Tenor 

Tenor 

Piano 

Piano 

RICHARD STRAUSS 

1864-1949 

Richard Strauss, born four years after 

Gustav Mahler, lived for nearly four 

decades beyond Mahler’s death. He had 

a musically conservative childhood. But, 

once he hit his compositional stride in a 

series of programmatic tone poems, he 

became a bête noire for people out of 

tune with the direction music was taking 

in the years before the turn of the 20th 

century. The peak of his challenging 

modernism came in the decade after 

1900, in the operas Salome, after Oscar 

Wilde, and Elektra, the first of six operas 

he would compose with the writer Hugo 

von Hoffmansthal. Their second and third 

collaborations, Der Rosenkavalier and 

Ariadne of Naxos, stepped away from 

the spine-tingling rawness of Salome 

and Elektra into worlds much more civil 

and civilised. When he moved on from 

murderous ancient times, Strauss chose 

to glory in the ambience of 18th-century 

Vienna, and gave the world some of the 

best-loved waltzes of all time. 

DER ROSENKAVALIER (THE KNIGHT OF THE ROSE) 1911 

Wie du warst! 

(The way you were!) ACT II 


The opera opens in the bedroom of the 32-year-old Marschallin who has spent a passionate night 

with Octavian, a 17-year-old nobleman, a role that is sung by a woman. For Octavian on the morning 

after, love is everywhere. 

Di rigori armato il seno 

(My bosom armed with severity) ACT I 

GAVAN RING, AOIFE O’SULLIVAN GOETHE-INSTITUT 

What’s an aria in Italian doing in this German opera? Well there’s a tenor in the cast (the role is 

just described as Tenor), and he does what he does best in the Marschallin’s busy boudoir, as her 

hairdresser is at work and she is surrounded by various servants. He sings an Italian aria. 

Ich bin Euer Liebden sehr verbunden 

(I am deeply indebted to you, your Honour) ACT II 


The 15-year-old Sophie von Faninal has been given in marriage to Baron Ochs – his name, which 

translates as Baron Ox, is a hint as to his character. As she waits for him, she is given a traditional 

presentation, a silver rose, from the hands of Octavian. When the two young people meet, it is love at 

first sight. “Where or when have I ever been so blissfully happy?” sings Sophie. 

34 

35

28 MAY 2021 

PROGRAMME 5 

GERMANY 

CONTINUED. 


Sarah Shine 



Gavan Ring 

Brenton Ryan 

Gary Beecher 


Soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Mezzo-soprano 

Tenor 

Tenor 

Piano 

Piano 

ELEKTRA 1909 

Ich kann nicht sitzen und ins Dunkel starren wie du 

(I cannot sit and stare into the darkness like you) 


Strauss’s one-act, 105-minute Elektra, adapted from Hoffmannsthal’s 1903 play after Sophocles, calls for an 

orchestra of over a hundred players and is one of opera’s most celebrated white-knuckle rides. “THE OPERA 

THAT WILL ‘ELEKTRIFY’ LONDON” ran a poster for the British premiere in 1912. Elektra wants vengeance for 

the murder of her father, Agamemnon, which was carried out by her mother, Clytemnestra, and her mother’s 

lover, Aegisthus. Elektra’s sister Chrysothemis does not share her dark focus. She wants a more normal life, 

and thinks of the children she could bear. Here she sings, “Far better to be dead than to be alive and not live.” 

ARIADNE AUF NAXOS (ARIADNE ON NAXOS) 1916 

Im Gegenteil. Man kommt von Tisch 

(On the contrary. They’ve just got up from table) PROLOGUE 


It seems madly extravagant, but the original conception of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos was as a one-act opera 

to follow a performance of Molière’s play Le bourgeois gentilhomme – given in German as Der Bürger als 

Edelmann – also with incidental music by Strauss. This expensive combination was first performed in Stuttgart 

in 1912. A revised, purely operatic version retaining the original collision of 18th-century opera stereotypes 

and commedia dell’ arte characters, followed in 1916. A Prologue, set in the 18th century, in the home of the 

richest man in Vienna – rich enough to have his own private theatre – is followed by Ariadne auf Naxos, an 

opera presented for all the guests in the house. Backstage is chaos. This aria from the Dancing Master is part 

of an argument about whether it would be better for the evening’s opera or dancing to come first. 

Sein wir wieder gut 

(Let’s make up!) [Composer’s Aria] PROLOGUE 


Image: Sinéad Campbell Wallace 

at the Goethe-Institut Dublin 


But the master orders both pieces to be presented simultaneously, in order not to delay his postperformance 

fireworks display. At the end of the Prologue the Composer has a lightbulb moment and 

sings an aria of exultation and exuberance. 

36 

37

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38 

23 39

BIOGRAPHIES 

CLAUDIA BOYLE 

SOPRANO 

SINGING BELLINI, DONIZETTI, TCHAIKOVSKY 

SINÉAD CAMPBELL WALLACE 

SOPRANO 

SINGING BEETHOVEN, WAGNER, STRAUSS 

SARAH SHINE 

SOPRANO 

SINGING MASSENET, RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, STRAUSS 

GEMMA NÍ BHRIAIN 

MEZZO-SOPRANO 

SINGING BERLIOZ, GOUNOD, STRAUSS 

Claudia Boyle has secured her 

stellar reputation on the world 

stage as one of the finest Irish 

opera singers of her generation. 

Her appearance last February 

in the title role of Gerald Barry’s 

Alice’s Adventures Under Ground at the Royal Opera, 

Covent Garden, won high praise, with Opera magazine 

writing she “seemed to possess limitless stamina 

and... to take every vocal demand in her stride”. She 

won both the First Prize and Critics Award at The 

Maria Callas Competition in Verona where the Callas 

Estate presented her with the miraculous medal once 

owned and worn by the legendary singer. And she was 

chosen by film director Mike Leigh to star as Mabel 

in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, his 

first ever opera production. Important appearances 

have included Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at Oslo 

Opera House and Semperoper Dresden, Mozart’s Die 

Entführung aus dem Serail at Komische Oper Berlin, 

Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers at English National Opera, 

Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Verdi’s 

Rigoletto at Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, and Donizetti’s 

Lucia di Lammermoor at Danish National Opera. 

She created the role of May-Shan in Christian Jost’s 

Rote Laterne at Opernhaus Zürich and performed in 

Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest with 

the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. Her 

concert career has taken her to Salzburg, Tokyo, São 

Paulo and Ankara as well as the G20 summit in 2019, 

with conductors including Riccardo Muti, Paavo Järvi, 

Eivind Gullberg Jensen and Kent Nagano. 

Having started her career as a lightlyric 

soprano, Sinéad has moved 

into fuller dramatic repertoire, 

to roles including Leonore in 

Beethoven’s Fidelio, the title role in 

Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, Agathe 

in Weber’s Der Freischütz, Helmwige in Wagner’s 

Die Walküre and Kaiserin in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne 

Schatten. She made her Salzburg Festival debut 

as Vierte Magd in Strauss’s Elektra, conducted by 

Franz Welser-Möst. Next season she makes her ENO 

debut singing Mimì in Puccini’s La bohème. Further 

ahead, she will make role debuts in three operas by 

Puccini, in the title role of Suor Angelica, as Giorgetta 

in Il tabarro and title role in Madama Butterfly. She 

was a member of the ensemble of the Theater 

Regensburg for the 2018-19 season, where her roles 

included Isabella in Martín y Soler’s Una cosa rara, 

Agathe in Weber’s Der Freischütz and Mary Lloyd in 

Kálmán’s Die Herzogin von Chicago. She returned 

to Theater Regensburg as a guest in the 2019-20 

season in the title role of Puccini’s Tosca. Other recent 

engagements have included Andrew Hamilton’s 

erth upon erth for Irish National Opera’s critically 

acclaimed 20 Shots of Opera, Leonore for Lyric Opera 

Productions, Zelika in Stanford’s The Veiled Prophet 

of Khorassan for Wexford Festival Opera, and Tosca 

for Scottish Opera. She is a graduate of the DIT 

Conservatory of Music and Drama, the National Opera 

Studio and the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme. 

Irish soprano Sarah Shine’s recent 

performances include Linda 

Buckley’s Glaoch in INO’s 20 

Shots of Opera, and Nannetta in 

Verdi’s Falstaff for Wexford Festival 

Opera, where she also created the 

role of Fran in Andrew Synnott’s What Happened to 

Lucrece? In 2019 she created the role of Angelika in 

Marius Felix Lange’s children’s opera Der Gesang der 

Zauberinsel at the Salzburg Festival, also performed in 

Masterclass with Helmut Deutsch and appeared with 

the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg. In 2018-19 she 

was an artist in residence at Opéra national de Paris, 

where she participated in concerts of the Academy 

at the Amphitheatre Bastille and Palais Garnier and 

performed the role of Adele in Johann Strauss’s Die 

Fledermaus presented at the MC93 before a tour 

of several French cities. In 2017-18 she made her 

debut in Paris as Leocadia in Phillippe Boesmans’s 

Reigen conducted by Jean Deroyer, and performed 

in concert with the Philharmonic Radio Orchestra, 

Bucharest, for the Beirut Chants Festival. In 2018 she 

was awarded the Siemens Opera Award of €10,000. 

Sarah graduated with a BA in Music Performance and 

a Recital Artist Diploma from the Royal Irish Academy 

of Music where she studied with Veronica Dunne. 

Shortly after, she was chosen as one of 40 finalists to 

compete at the Neue Stimmen International Singing 

Competition 2015 in Gütersloh, Germany. She has 

received bursaries from Siemens, the Arts Council/ 

An Chomhairle Ealaíon, Limerick City Council and the 

Christopher Lynch Operatic Bursary. 

Born in Dublin, mezzo-soprano 

Gemma Ní Bhriain graduated in 

June 2014 with a BA in Music 

Performance from the Royal Irish 

Academy of Music where she 

studied with Veronica Dunne. After 

completing her degree, she was invited to become 

a member of the Atelier Lyrique Opera Studio at 

Opéra national de Paris. During her two seasons in 

Paris she debuted in five roles, including two world 

premieres. In 2016 she then went on to join, for a 

further two seasons, the International Opera Studio at 

Zurich Opera House. There she performed many roles 

including Cléone in Charpentier’s Médée, Le Pâtre, 

La Chatte and L’écureuil in Ravel’s L’enfant et les 

Sortilèges, Zweite Dame in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, 

Valletto in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea 

and Ramiro in Mozart’s La finta giardiniera. Over the 

past number of years, she also made her concert 

debuts at Théâtre de Champs-Elysées, Radio France, 

and solo recital debut at Amphithéâtre Bastille, Opéra 

national de Paris. In 2018 she made her company 

and role debut with Irish National Opera as Niklausse 

in Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann and recently 

performed in Linda Buckley’s Glaoch for INO’s 20 

Shots of Opera, She will return to the stage in Ireland 

in September 2021 where she will be performing for 

the first time with Blackwater Valley Opera Festival. 

She will perform the role of La Ciesca in Puccini’s 

Gianni Schicchi and also Maid Marion in the world 

premiere of Ina Boyle’s The Maudlin of Paplewick. 

40 

41

BIOGRAPHIES 

NAOMI LOUISA O’CONNELL 

MEZZO-SOPRANO 

SINGING BELLINI, MASSENET, STRAUSS 

GAVAN RING 

TENOR 

SINGING MASSENET, GOUNOD, TCHAIKOVSKY, 

STRAUSS 

BRENTON RYAN 

TENOR 

SINGING WAGNER, MUSSORGSKY, STRAUSS 

BEN McATEER 

BARITONE 

SINGING WAGNER, TCHAIKOVSKY 

Hailed by The New York Times 

as “radiant,” Naomi made her 

professional debut in 2012 starring 

on the West End in Terrence 

McNally’s play Master Class. Her 

work encompasses both theatrical 

and operatic repertoire, ranging from straight plays to 

operas, recitals and cabarets to sound installations. 

She is sought after for her interpretations of 

contemporary opera, and recently created the role of 

Mrs Van Buren in Intimate Apparel at Lincoln Center 

Theater, a development of the Metropolitan Opera/ 

LCT commissioning program returning to stages in 

2022. She made her INO debut in Brian Irvine and 

Netia Jones’ Least Like The Other: Searching for 

Rosemary Kennedy, and was described in Operawire 

as “in every respect outstanding.” Notable roles 

include the title role in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione 

di Poppea (Oper Frankfurt), Cherubino in Mozart’s 

Le nozze di Figaro (Welsh National Opera, Atlanta 

Opera), Offenbach’s La Périchole (Garsington 

Opera), and Mélisande in Pelléas et Mélisande – both 

Maeterlinck’s play and Debussy’s opera – with the 

Cincinnati Symphony. Lauded by The New York Times 

as “a natural in the recital format” for her Carnegie 

Hall debut recital Witches, Bitches & Women in 

Britches at Weill Recital Hall, she has performed in 

concert across the USA. She was brought up in the 

Burren and studied in Ireland with Archie Simpson 

and Mary Brennan. A graduate of the Royal Irish 

Academy of Music and the Juilliard School, her 

upcoming performances include appearances with 

NYC’s PROTOTYPE festival and the National Gallery 

recital series in Washington DC. 

Irish tenor and former baritone 

Gavan Ring is an INO Artistic 

Partner and hails from Cahersiveen, 

Co. Kerry. He studied at the Schola 

Cantorum at St Finian’s College, 

Mullingar, read education and 

music at Dublin City University and is also an alumnus 

of the National Opera Studio in London. He is the first 

opera singer to complete doctoral studies at the Royal 

Irish Academy of Music and his research led to the 

first performance in 107 years of Robert O’Dwyer’s 

Irish-language opera Eithne. Career highlights include 

leading roles at La Monnaie, Brussels, Opéra Royal 

de Versailles, Glyndebourne, Welsh National Opera, 

Scottish Opera, Opera North, Garsington Opera, 

Wexford Festival Opera and Opera Holland Park. 

Concert highlights include performances with the LSO 

at the BBC Proms and Lucerne Festival under Simon 

Rattle, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment 

at the Royal Festival Hall under Mark Elder and the 

Munich Radio Orchestra at the Prinzregententheater 

under Keri Lynn-Wilson. Recital work includes 

broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and RTÉ lyric fm and 

appearances at Wigmore Hall, the Oxford Lieder 

Festival and the Ludlow English Song Festival. His 

discography includes the songs of John F Larchet, 

Rossini’s Sigismondo, O’Dwyer’s Eithne, Gilbert and 

Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, Offenbach’s Fantasio and 

Fleischmann’s Orchestral Works for the Champs Hill, 

BR Klassik, RTÉ lyric fm, Linn Records and Opera 

Rara labels. Gavan is kindly supported by Howard 

Gatiss, Skellig Six 18 Distillery and Michael and 

Giancarla Alen-Buckley. 

Brenton Ryan, winner of the Birgit 

Nilsson prize at the 2016 Operalia 

competition, has been hailed by 

Opera News for his “remarkable 

tonal suavity and refined phrasing,” 

and is widely recognized as a singer 

of great vocal diversity and dramatic depth. For 

the 2020-21 season, he returns to Santa Fe Opera 

as Flute in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream 

and Don Basilio in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. He 

also made his company debut with Irish National 

Opera, singing The Doctor in Conor Linehan’s The 

Patient Woman as part of their 20 Shots of Opera 

digital series. He was scheduled to return to the 

Metropolitan Opera this season to sing Monostatos in 

Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte under by Gustavo Dudamel, 

and Lyric Opera of Chicago as Don Basilio in Le 

nozze di Figaro, under music director Andrew Davis. 

He was also scheduled to return to San Francisco 

Opera as Nick in Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s 

Tale, and to San Diego Opera to sing Monostatos in 

Die Zauberflöte. Scheduled orchestral engagements 

included Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the 

Peoria Symphony Orchestra. The 2021-22 season 

will see him return to the Metropolitan Opera to sing 

Missail and cover Shuisky in Mussorgsky’s Boris 

Godunov, Dancing Master in Strauss’s Ariadne auf 

Naxos (which will be broadcast as part of the Met’s 

Live in HD series), and Spoletta in Puccini’s Tosca. 

Northern Irish baritone Ben 

McAteer is an alumnus of the 

National Opera Studio in London 

and the Guildhall School of Music 

& Drama. Before embarking 

on a musical career he studied 

chemistry at the University of St Andrews. Recent 

and future operatic highlights include Schaunard 

in Irish National Opera’s concert performance of 

Puccini’s La bohème, Eisenstein in Johann Strauss’s 

Die Fledermaus for Northern Ireland Opera, Father 

in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel with INO and 

Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Count Almaviva in 

Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro for INO, Marcello in 

Puccini’s La bohème for Lyric Opera Productions, 

and Pangloss in Leonard Bernstein’s Candide with 

the Xi’an Symphony Orchestra. At Scottish Opera 

he created the role of James in the world première 

of Stuart McRae’s The Devil Inside, for which he 

won Outstanding Performance in an Opera at the 

My Theatre Awards in Toronto. Notable concert 

performances include the world première of 

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s At Sixes and Sevens with 

the London Symphony Orchestra, Orff’s Carmina 

Burana at the Barbican, and performances of 

Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols 

and Copland’s Old American Songs with the Ulster 

Orchestra. 

42 

43

BIOGRAPHIES 

GYULA NAGY 

BARITONE 

SINGING DONIZETTI, BEETHOVEN, BORODIN 

Gyula Nagy is a Hungarian 

baritone based in Wicklow. Save 

for the Covid-19 lockdown, he 

would have made his INO debut 

as Moralès in Bizet’s Carmen last 

March. Recent Irish performances 

include Karen Power’s Touch for INO’s critically 

acclaimed 20 Shots of Opera, Pizarro in Beethoven’s 

Fidelio for Lyric Opera Productions and the title role 

in Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses for Opera 

Collective Ireland. Recent international appearances 

include Schaunard in Puccini’s La bohème for the 

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Gipsy in 

Mussorgsky’s The Fair at Sorochyntsi for Komische 

Oper Berlin. He is an alumnus of the Jette Parker 

Young Artists Programme at Covent Garden, 2016- 

18. His Royal Opera House roles include Escamillo 

in Peter Brook’s La Tragédie de Carmen, Moralès 

in Bizet’s Carmen, Fiorello in Rossini’s Il barbiere di 

Siviglia, Filotete in Handel’s Oreste, Konrad Nachtigal 

in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Baron 

Douphol in Verdi’s La traviata, as well as Paul in Philip 

Glass’s Les enfants terribles for the Royal Ballet. 

He has also worked with Welsh National Opera and 

Scottish Opera, and in concert with the Irish Baroque 

Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, RTÉ National 

Symphony Orchestra and many Irish and English 

choral societies. He trained at the National Opera 

Studio in London, and in Dublin, where he was a 

Young Associate Artist with Opera Theatre Company. 

He studied with Károly Ötvös and Mária Fekete in 

Hungary and with Philip O’Reilly at the Royal Irish 

Academy of Music. 

JOHN MOLLOY 

BASS 

SINGING BELLINI, WAGNER, GOUNOD 

John Molloy is one of Ireland’s 

leading basses and hails from Birr. 

He studied at the DIT Conservatory 

of Music and Drama, the Royal 

Northern College of Music in 

Manchester and the National Opera 

Studio in London. He made his INO debut in 2018 

as Antonio in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and in 

March 2021 performed Colline in Puccini’s La bohème. 

Roles he has undertaken for Opera Theatre Company 

include Sparafucile in Verdi’s Rigoletto, Trinity Moses 

in Weill’s Mahagonny, the title role in Mozart’s The 

Marriage of Figaro, Zuniga in Bizet’s Carmen and he 

also appeared in Stephen Deazley’s children’s opera 

BUG OFF!!! Other roles include Alidoro in Rossini’s 

La Cenerentola (Scottish Opera), Guccio in Puccini’s 

Gianni Schicchi (Royal Opera House, London), Masetto 

in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (English National Opera), 

Arthur in Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse and 

Figaro in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Nationale 

Reisopera, Netherlands), Le Commandeur in Thomas’s 

La cour de Célimène (Wexford Festival Opera), Angelotti 

in Puccini’s Tosca, Luka in Walton’s The Bear, Banco 

in Verdi’s Macbeth and Dulcamara in Donizetti’s 

L’elisir d’amore (OTC and NI Opera), Raimondo in 

Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (Opera Holland 

Park), Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Sarastro in 

Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Bonze in Puccini’s Madama 

Butterfly (Lyric Opera Productions), Snug in Britten’s 

A Midsummer Nights Dream (Opera Ireland) and 

Henry Kissinger in John Adams’s Nixon in China (Wide 

Open Opera). International concert repertoire includes 

Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Verdi’s Requiem, 

Mendelssohn’s St Paul, Haydn’s Creation, Handel’s 

Messiah and Stravinsky’s Renard. 

GARY BEECHER 

RÉPÉTITEUR 

PLAYING DONIZETTI, BEETHOVEN, WAGNER, 

MASSENET, RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, BORODIN, STRAUSS 

Cork pianist Gary Beecher has a 

varied career as an accompanist, 

chamber musician and soloist. 

In 2019 he scored important 

international competition 

successes, including the 

International Nadia and Lili Boulanger Voice-Piano 

Competition (Paris), the Rudolf Jansen Pianist Prize 

at the 53rd International Vocal Competition LiedDuo 

(’s-Hertogenbosch), and 2nd Pianist Prize at the 

International Helmut Deutsch Lied Competition 

(Vienna). He was the winner of the Irish Freemasons 

Young Musician of the Year and has performed 

as soloist with both the RTÉ National Symphony 

Orchestra and RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Venues he 

has performed in include the National Concert Hall 

and RDS in Dublin, University Concert Hall, Limerick, 

and the Barbican and Wigmore Hall in London. He 

completed his MA at the Guildhall School of Music 

and Drama in London where he was also a Fellow and 

staff accompanist, and was also mentored by Julius 

Drake and Charles Owen. He holds a BMus and MA 

from the CIT Cork School of Music, where he studied 

with Susan & Jan Čáp, Michael McHale and Gabriela 

Mayer; and former teachers include Jacques Rouvier 

(Universität der Künste Berlin) and John O’Conor 

(RIAM). He is currently undertaking a Doctorate at the 

Royal Irish Academy of Music where he is studying 

with Hugh Tinney. He also teaches piano at RIAM, 

and is a coach accompanist at the MTU (formerly 

CIT) Cork School of Music and Irish World Academy of 

Music and Dance, University of Limerick. 

AOIFE O’SULLIVAN 

RÉPÉTITEUR 

PLAYING BELLINI, DONIZETTI, BEETHOVEN, WAGNER, 

BERLIOZ, GOUNOD, MASSENET, TCHAIKOVSKY, 

STRAUSS 

Aoife O’Sullivan was born in Dublin 

and studied at the College of Music 

with Frank Heneghan and later at 

the RIAM with John O’Conor. She 

graduated from Trinity College 

Dublin with an honours degree in 

music. In September 1999 she began her studies 

as a Fulbright scholar at the Curtis Institute of Music 

and in 2001 she joined the staff there for her final two 

years. She was awarded the Geoffrey Parsons Trust 

Award for accompaniment of singers in 2005. She 

has worked on the music staff at Wexford Festival 

Opera, and on three Handel operas for Opera Theatre 

Company, Orlando, Xerxes, and Alcina, and for Opera 

Ireland on Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and 

Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She also 

worked at the National Opera Studio in London and 

was on the deputy coach list for the Jette Parker 

Young Artist Programme at the Royal Opera House 

Covent Garden. She has played for masterclasses 

including those given by Malcolm Martineau, Ann 

Murray, Thomas Allen, Thomas Hampson and Anna 

Moffo. She worked on Mozart’s Zaide at the Britten 

Pears Young Artist Programme and on Britten’s 

Turn of the Screw for the Cheltenham Festival with 

Paul Kildea. She has appeared at the Wigmore Hall 

in concerts with Ann Murray (chamber versions of 

Mahler and Berg), Gweneth Ann Jeffers, Wendy Dawn 

Thompson and Sinéad Campbell Wallace. She is now 

based in Dublin where she works as a répétiteur and 

vocal coach at TU Dublin Conservatoire and also 

regularly for INO. 

44 

45

BIOGRAPHIES 

GERALD BARRY 

COMPOSER 

AMANDA FEERY 

COMPOSER 

FINOLA MERIVALE 

COMPOSER 

EMMA O’HALLORAN 

COMPOSER 

Gerald Barry was born in Clarehill, 

Clarecastle, Co Clare, in 1952, and 

studied with Stockhausen and 

Kagel. His early music from 1979 

included “_______” for ensemble, 

of which Kagel wrote: “Gerald 

Barry is always sober, but might as well always be 

drunk. His piece “_______” is, on the contrary, not 

rectilineal, but “ ”.” Barry’s orchestral works 

include the BBC commissions Chevaux-de-frise 

(1988), The Conquest of Ireland (1996), Day (2005- 

14), The Eternal Recurrence (2000) for voice and 

orchestra, and Hard D (1995). No other people was 

presented at the 2013 Proms with the BBC Scottish 

Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov, and Canada 

(2017) was premiered by the City of Birmingham 

Symphony Orchestra and tenor Allan Clayton under 

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla at the 2017 Proms, with a 

repeat broadcast in the 2020 Proms. Solo concertos 

include a Piano Concerto (2012) for Nicolas Hodges, 

an Organ Concerto (2018) and a Viola Concerto for 

Laurence Power and the Britten Sinfonia. He is well 

known for his six operas, The Intelligence Park (1981- 

88), The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit (1991), The 

Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (2001-04), La Plus 

Forte (2007), and The Importance of Being Earnest 

(2009-10). His most recent opera Alice’s Adventures 

Under Ground (2014-15) was premiered in concert in 

2016 by the LA Phil New Music Group with Barbara 

Hannigan in the title role. In February 2020, Thomas 

Adès conducted the first staged production at the 

Royal Opera House. His music has been released 

on NMC, Black Box, Marco Polo, BVHaast, and 

Discovery. 

Amanda Feery is a composer 

working with acoustic, electronic, 

and improvised music, who 

has written for chamber and 

vocal ensembles, film, theatre, 

installation, and multimedia. She 

studied music at Trinity College Dublin and Princeton 

University, where she completed her PhD in Music 

Composition in 2019. Her research focused on Kate 

Bush’s song suite, The Ninth Wave. In the US she 

formed collaborative relationships with a number 

of ensembles and musicians including Alarm Will 

Sound, Third Coast Percussion, ensemble mise-en, 

Bearthoven, the vocal quartet Quince Ensemble, and 

cellist Amanda Gookin. Collaborators closer to home 

include Crash Ensemble, RTÉ Contempo Quartet, 

RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, This is How We 

Fly, Chamber Choir Ireland, Dublin Guitar Quartet, 

Paul Roe, Michelle O’Rourke, and Lina Andonovska. 

Her work has featured at New Music Dublin, First 

Fortnight Festival and Dublin Fringe Festival, and 

she has been composer-in-residence at Bang on a 

Can Summer Festival, SOUNDscape and Greywood 

Arts. Her 2019 residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais 

focused on recording piano improvisations on public 

pianos in Paris. Recent projects include works for 

National Sawdust’s Hildegard Commission, Spilt 

Milk Festival, Music Network’s Butterfly Sessions, 

and Tadhg O’Sullivan’s film To the Moon. Upcoming 

projects include works for Chamber Choir Ireland, 

Cork Midsummer Festival, and Kaleidoscope Night, 

and the premiere of her INO commission, A Thing I 

Cannot Name, with a libretto by Megan Nolan. Future 

projects include five, 60-second micro pieces for 

Fiachra Garvey and Sebastian Adams and an opera 

for flute for Lina Andonovska. 

Finola Merivale is an Irish composer 

of acoustic and electro-acoustic 

music, currently living in New York 

City. She is a Dean’s Fellow at 

Columbia University where she is 

pursuing a DMA in Composition, 

studying with George Lewis, Georg Friedrich Haas and 

Zosha Di Castri. Themes that run across her music 

include climate change, inequality and a sense of 

place – both real and imagined. Her compositions 

have been performed internationally – in North and 

South America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia – 

and featured at festivals such as the Huddersfield 

Contemporary Music Festival, the Bang on a Can 

Summer Music Festival, the Contemporary Music 

Festival of Buenos Aires, and Vox Feminae in Tel 

Aviv. Her music has been performed by musicians 

of the Chicago and St Louis Symphony Orchestras, 

the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), 

Talea Ensemble, Desdemona Ensemble, Crash 

Ensemble, ~Nois Quartet, PRISM Saxophone Quartet 

and Bearthoven. Projects in 2020–21 include 

commissions from bassoonist Rebekah Heller, pianist 

Karl Larson and her first evening-length multimedia 

work for Real Loud. Finola will have three records 

released in 2021, including her first solo album, String 

Music of Finola Merivale, recorded by Desdemona 

Ensemble. Pathos Trio is releasing her new work 

oblivious / oblivion on their debut album and ~Nois 

Quartet is releasing her 2016 saxophone quartet 

Kenopsia. 

Emma O’Halloran is an Irish 

composer and vocalist who freely 

intertwines acoustic and electronic 

music. A recent graduate from the 

doctoral programme at Princeton 

University, she has written for folk 

musicians, chamber ensembles, turntables, laptop 

orchestra, symphony orchestra, film, and theatre. 

For her efforts, she has been praised by I Care If 

You Listen editor-in-chief Amanda Cook for writing 

“some of the most unencumbered, authentic, and 

joyful music that I have heard in recent years,” and 

has won numerous competitions, including National 

Sawdust’s inaugural Hildegard competition and the 

Next Generation award from Beth Morrison Projects. 

The Wait, her contribution to INO’s 20 Shots of Opera 

was praised as “a real gem... a provocative work that 

grips the imagination” (Operawire) and as a piece 

that “journeys into dark, and often disturbing spaces” 

(The Arts Review). Her music aims to capture the 

human experience, exploring complex emotions 

felt in specific moments in time. This approach has 

found a wide audience. Her work has been featured 

at the international Classical NEXT conference 

in Rotterdam, the Bang on a Can Summer Music 

Festival, and MATA Festival, and has also been 

performed by Crash Ensemble, Contemporaneous, 

Khemia Ensemble, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, 

and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. She 

is currently working on her first full-length opera, 

Trade, which will be developed, produced, and toured 

internationally by Beth Morrison Projects. 

46 

47

BIOGRAPHIES 

ABL AVIATION OPERA STUDIO 

JENNIFER WALSHE 

COMPOSER 

“The most original compositional 

voice to emerge from Ireland 

in the past 20 years” (The Irish 

Times) and “wild girl of Darmstadt” 

(Frankfurter Rundschau), composer 

and performer Jennifer Walshe was 

born in Dublin. Her music has been commissioned, 

broadcast and performed all over the world. She has 

been the recipient of fellowships and prizes from the 

Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York, the 

DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm, the Internationales 

Musikinstitut, Darmstadt, and Akademie Schloss 

Solitude among others. She has written a large 

number of operas and theatrical works, including 

XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!! an opera for Barbie dolls, 

and TIME TIME TIME, with the philosopher Timothy 

Morton, which The Wire described as “a sprawling 

opus that spans the history of the planet… like Robert 

Ashley meets Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life”. 

Her Libris Solar was one of the works commissioned 

last year for INO’s highly-praised 20 Shots of Opera. 

Her visual work has been exhibited in the Chelsea Art 

Museum, New York, Project Arts Centre, Dublin and 

the ICA, London. 

ABL AVIATION OPERA 

STUDIO ARTISTS 

2020 – 2021 

Rachel Goode 

Soprano 

Kelli-Ann Masterson 

Soprano 

Aebh Kelly 

Mezzo-soprano 

David Howes 

Bass-baritone 

Elaine Kelly 

Conductor 

Amanda Feery 

Composer 

Davey Kelleher 

Director 

Luke Lally Maguire 

Répétiteur 

ABL Aviation, the international aviation investment company 

with offices in Dublin, New York, Casablanca, Dubai and 

Hong Kong, is the principal sponsor of Irish National Opera’s 

studio mentoring programme. 

Members of ABL Aviation Opera Studio are involved in all 

of Irish National Opera’s productions, large and small. They 

sing onstage in roles or in the chorus, understudy lead roles 

– enabling them to watch and emulate great artists at work – 

and, for non-singing members, they join in the world of opera 

rehearsals as assistants. 

Studio members also receive individual coaching, attend 

masterclasses and receive mentorship from leading Irish and 

international singers and musicians. Brenda Hurley, Head of 

Opera at the Royal Academy of Music, London, is the vocal 

consultant who guides our singers throughout the year. One 

of Ireland’s leading theatres, The Civic, Tallaght, works with 

the studio as a cultural partner, and the theatre’s artistic 

director, Michael Barker-Caven, is the studio’s stagecraft 

consultant. 

Other areas of specific attention are performance and 

language skills, and members are assisted in their individual 

personal musical development and given professional career 

guidance. They benefit from Irish National Opera’s national 

and international contacts and ABL Aviation Opera Studio 

also develops and promotes specially tailored events to help 

the members hone specific skills and showcase their work. 

For information contact Studio & Outreach Producer 

James Bingham at james@irishnationalopera.ie 

48 

49

THE CRITICS HAVE SPOKEN 

IRISH NATIONAL OPERA’S 20 SHOTS OF OPERA HAVE 

RESONATED WITH REVIEWERS AROUND THE WORLD 

★★★★★ 

“exemplary lockdown music-making” 

THE OBSERVER 

★★★★★ 

“brilliantly executed, with superb singer-actors” 

THE STAGE 

★★★★★ 

“exploding expectations and showing remarkable 

innovation” 

THE ARTS REVIEW 

20 COMPOSERS. 20 OPERAS. 

go to operavision.com 

MUIREANN AHERN 

GERALD BARRY 

ÉNA BRENNAN 

IRENE BUCKLEY 

LINDA BUCKLEY 

MARINA CARR 

DYLAN COBURN GRAY 

ROBERT COLEMAN 

DAVID COONAN 

ALEX DOWLING 

PETER FAHEY 

STELLA FEEHILY 

MICHAEL GALLEN 

ANDREW HAMILTON 

IONE 

JENN KIRBY 

ANNE LE MARQUAND HARTIGAN 

CONOR LINEHAN 

LOUIS LOVETT 

CONOR MITCHELL 

GRÁINNE MULVEY 

DOIREANN NÍ GHRÍOFA 

EMMA O’HALLORAN 

MARK O’HALLORAN 

HANNAH PEEL 

KAREN POWER 

EVANGELIA RIGAKI 

BENEDICT SCHLEPPER-CONNOLLY 

JESSICA TRAYNOR 

JENNIFER WALSHE 

“a mark of real artistic vision” 

JOURNAL OF MUSIC 

“one of the most remarkable 

productions of international music 

theatre during the two lockdowns” 

NEUE MUSIKZEITUNG [GERMANY] 

“an exhilarating jaunt through 

up-to-the-minute lyric creativity” 

WALL STREET JOURNAL 

“It’s a great idea and exactly what 

our times call for.” 

THE TIMES 

“an unexpected stimulus for 

composers, librettists, directors, 

performers and, not least, 

audiences” 

OPERA MAGAZINE 

“The singers, some seen in 

extreme closeup, are wonderfully 

expressive and committed” 

OPERA NEWS [NEW YORK] 

“twenty new compact operas 

inventively addressing themes of 

today” 

SEEN & HEARD INTERNATIONAL 

“an extraordinarily impressive 

guide to the vocal talent in this 

country” 

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT 

“an impressive creative statement 

about and against the cultural 

restrictions of this terrible 

pandemic – and a pleasure 

to watch” 

FRANKFURTER ALLEMEINE [GERMANY] 

“When the pandemic tide 

recedes, this will be one of the 

gems remaining on the shore.” 

IRISH INDEPENDENT 

“these works have a bracing 

vitality, delivering small doses of 

humour, gloom, grief, anger and 

abstract images about life, beauty 

and decay” 

THE IRISH MAIL ON SUNDAY 

“a romp through hot topics and 

the psyche of the human being 

during lockdown” 

DER STANDARD [AUSTRIA] 

“Sentence by sentence, note by 

note, a mosaic of this exceptional 

time is pieced together here: 

more multi-faceted, more 

complete than two or three artists 

alone could ever have managed” 

OPERNWELT [GERMANY] 

irishnationalopera.ie

NEAR AND FAR, HIGH 

AND LOW 

IRISH NATIONAL OPERA IS FOR EVERYONE 

Opera is our passion. And we want to share that 

passion. Not just through live events in cities 

and towns, large and small, but also through 

educational initiatives in schools and colleges, 

and community activities that appeal to young 

and old alike. 

Image: Pupils from Bennekerry 

Primary School giving an operatic blast 

in a Popera project with Irish National 

Opera, the Royal Irish Academy of 

Music, and Music Generation Carlow 

OPERA WHEREVER YOU ARE 

We take our productions to all corners of the land, from 

Dublin to Galway, Tralee to Letterkenny, Wexford to Sligo. 

And if you’re not able to come to us, we can come to you 

wherever you are in the world. Our digital platform, with many 

offerings that can be viewed for free, has won praise from the 

international media. And we will be launching exciting new 

online projects over the coming months. 

TRAILBLAZING DEVELOPMENTS 

IN THE COMMUNITY 

Our innovative virtual reality community opera, Out of 

the Ordinary, is already in full swing. It’s a voyage into the 

unknown and will place people from the communities involved 

directly at the heart of the creative process. The project is not 

just embracing new technologies and widening participation 

in the arts at a community level. It is also exploring the cutting 

edge relationship between opera and digital technology. We 

are working with our partners in The Civic, Tallaght, Conradh 

na Gaeilge and Music Generation Offaly/Westmeath to have 

the project ready for nationwide touring in 2022. 

ABL AVIATION OPERA STUDIO 

The professional development and employment of Irish artists are key to the success of 

Irish National Opera itself, and the ABL Aviation Opera Studio is our artistic development 

programme. It provides specially tailored training, professional mentoring and high-level 

professional engagements for a group of individuals – singers, répétiteurs, conductors, 

directors, composers – whose success will be key to the future development of opera in 

Ireland. 

IN FOCUS 

Our pre-performance In Focus talks aim to provide background to the works in our major 

productions. They delve into all aspects of opera, from the histories of specific works, the 

development of the characters and the issues facing performers and composers – where 

possible with the actual performers and composers themselves. 

INSPIRING MUSIC STUDENTS 

We work with third-level music students through workshops designed to give them a fuller 

understanding of the inner workings of the world of opera, that heady mixture of musical and 

theatrical skills that make possible the magic that is opera. Colleges and universities we have 

worked with include University College Dublin, National College of Art and Design, Maynooth 

University, NUI Galway, TU Dublin and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. 

52 

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54 

FOUNDERS CIRCLE 

Anonymous 

Desmond Barry & John Redmill 

Valerie Beatty & Dennis Jennings 

Mark & Nicola Beddy 

Carina & Ali Ben Lmadani 

Mary Brennan 

Angie Brown 

Breffni & Jean Byrne 


Seán Caldwell & Richard Caldwell 

Caroline Classon, in memoriam 

David Warren, Gorey 

Audrey Conlon 

Gerardine Connolly 

Jackie Connolly 

Gabrielle Croke 

Sarah Daniel 

Maureen de Forge 

Doreen Delahunty & Michael Moriarty 

Joseph Denny 

Kate Donaghy 

Marcus Dowling 

Mareta & Conor Doyle 

Noel Doyle & Brigid McManus 

Michael Duggan 

Catherine & William Earley 

Jim & Moira Flavin 

Ian & Jean Flitcroft 

Anne Fogarty 

Maire & Maurice Foley 

Roy & Aisling Foster 

Howard Gatiss 

Genesis 

Hugh & Mary Geoghegan 

Diarmuid Hegarty 

M Hely Hutchinson 

Gemma Hussey 

Kathy Hutton & David McGrath 

Nuala Johnson 

Susan Kiely 

Timothy King & Mary Canning 

J & N Kingston 

Kate & Ross Kingston 

Silvia & Jay Krehbiel 

Karlin Lillington & Chris Horn 


Jane Loughman 

Rev Bernárd Lynch & Billy Desmond 

Lyndon MacCann SC 

Phyllis Mac Namara 

Tony & Joan Manning 

R John McBratney 

Ruth McCarthy, in memoriam Niall 

& Barbara McCarthy 

Petria McDonnell 

Jim McKiernan 

Tyree & Jim McLeod 

Jean Moorhead 

Sara Moorhead 

Joe & Mary Murphy 

Ann Nolan & Paul Burns 

FX & Pat O’Brien 

James & Sylvia O’Connor 

John & Viola O’Connor 

Joseph O’Dea 

Dr J R O’Donnell 

Deirdre O’Donovan & Daniel Collins 

Diarmuid O’Dwyer 

Patricia O’Hara 

Annmaree O’Keefe & Chris Greene 

Carmel & Denis O’Sullivan 

Líosa O’Sullivan & Mandy Fogarty 

Hilary Pratt 

Sue Price 

Landmark Productions 

Riverdream Productions 

Nik Quaife & Emerson Bruns 

Margaret Quigley 

Patricia Reilly 

Dr Frances Ruane 

Catherine Santoro 

Dermot & Sue Scott 

Yvonne Shields 

Fergus Sheil Sr 

Gaby Smyth 

Matthew Patrick Smyth 

Bruce Stanley 

Sara Stewart 

The Wagner Society of Ireland 

Julian & Beryl Stracey 

Michael Wall & Simon Nugent 

Brian Walsh & Barry Doocey 

Judy Woodworth 

Image: John Molloy with Aoife O’Sullivan, piano 

at Bord Gáis Energy Theatre 

Photo: Kip Carroll

INO 

TEAM 

James Bingham 

Studio & Outreach Producer 

Sorcha Carroll 

Marketing Manager 

Aoife Daly 

Development Manager 

Diego Fasciati 

Executive Director 

Sarah Halpin 

Digital Communications 

Manager 

Cate Kelliher 

Business & Finance Manager 

Patricia Malpas 

Project Administrator 

Claire Lowney 

Development & Marketing 

Executive 

Muireann Ní Dhubhghaill 

Artistic Administrator 

Gavin O’Sullivan 

Head of Production 

Fergus Sheil 

Artistic Director 

Paula Tierney 

Company Stage Manager 

Board of Directors 

Gaby Smyth (Chair) 


Tara Erraught 

Gerard Howlin 

Gary Joyce 


Sara Moorhead 

Joseph Murphy 

Ann Nolan 

Yvonne Shields 

Michael Wall 

69 Dame Street 

Dublin 2 | Ireland 

T: 01–679 4962 

E: info@irishnationalopera.ie 

irishnationalopera.ie 

@irishnationalopera 

@irishnatopera 

@irishnationalopera 

Company Reg No.: 601853 

Registered Charity: 22403 

(RCN) 20204547 

56

irishnationalopera.ie

INO Friday Opera Explorer

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