Cosí fan tutte programme book 2023

STEPHANIE DUFRESNE
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
AOIFE O’SULLIVAN
RÉPÉTITEUR
Stephanie is a dancer, actor and
choreographer from the west
of Ireland. She holds a BA in
dance from the Rotterdam Dance
Academy and is a graduate of the
full-time programme for screenacting
at the Bow Street Academy in Smithfield.
Since graduating she has enjoyed combining her
skills for companies and choreographers like Protein
Dance, Chrysalis Dance, Dam Van Huynh, Marguerite
Donlon, Liz Roche, Emma Martin/United Fall and Junk
Ensemble. She played the lead role of Karen in Selina
Cartmell’s production of The Red Shoes for the Gate
Theatre in 2017 and has appeared as a performer in
music videos for Talos, Dean Lewis, Crash Ensemble
and Galia Arad among others. Stephanie’s show
After Love premiered at the Galway International Arts
Festival in 2021. She has collaborated previously with
Irish National Opera on Gluck’s Orfeo ed Eurydice,
Gerard Barry’s Alice’s Adventure’s Underground,
Bizet’s Carmen and Rossini’s William Tell. She was
one of four performers in INO’s Least Like The Other
which recently finished a run at the Royal Opera
House in London, where it was nominated for an
Olivier Award. She made her opera-directing debut
in Benedict Schlepper-Connolly’s Dust in INO’s highly
praised 20 Shots of Opera.
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 TCD 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. 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.
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