Salome 2024 Programme

BIOGRAPHIES
EOGHAN DESMOND
BARITONE
FIFTH JEW
LUKAS JAKOBSKI
BASS
SECOND SOLDIER
IMELDA DRUMM
MEZZO-SOPRANO
HERODIAS
ANDREW MASTERSON
TENOR
SECOND JEW
Eoghan Desmond is a baritone
from Cork. His oratorio repertoire
includes Mendelssohn’s Elijah and
Die erste Walpurgisnacht, Handel’s
Messiah and Alexander’s Feast,
Bach’s St Matthew Passion, St
John Passion, Mass in B minor, Magnificat, Christmas
Oratorio, Graun’s Der Tod Jesu, Vaughan Williams’s
Hodie, Willow-Wood, Five Mystical Songs, Fantasia
on Christmas Carols, and the Requiems of Brahms,
Duruflé, Fauré, Howells, Mozart and Verdi. He is an
accomplished choral singer, a member of Chamber
Choir Ireland, and a regular guest with choirs
including the BBC singers and I Fagiolini. Outside
of his singing work, he is a sought-after composer.
Recent commissions include a song cycle entitled
New Light, commissioned by tenor Conor Prendiville,
and Nothing in Vain, a choral meditation which can
be heard on a recently released disc by The Sixteen.
He holds a PhD in Composition from The University
of Aberdeen.
Born in Poland, Lukas Jakobski
studied at the Royal College of
Music, and was a member of
the Jette Parker Young Artist
Programme at the Royal Opera
House, Covent Garden. His
engagements have included Apprentice in Berg’s
Wozzeck, Peter Quince in Britten’s A Midsummer
Night’s Dream and Hobson in Britten’s Peter Grimes
at the Theater an der Wien; Abbot in Britten’s Curlew
River, Voice of Neptune in Mozart’s Idomeneo and
Pietro in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra at the Opéra
de Lyon; Hobson in Peter Grimes at the Palau de
les Arts Reina Sofía, Valencia; Zuniga in Bizet’s
Carmen and Colline in Puccini’s La bohème for
Glyndebourne On Tour and INO, Nettuno/Antinoo/
Tempo in Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria
at Drottningholm, the Commendatore in Mozart’s
Don Giovanni for the Nederlandse Reisopera; Don
Cassandro in Mozart’s La finta semplice for Classical
Opera; Truffaldino in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos for
the Warsaw Philharmonic. For Dutch National Opera,
he has sung the Captain in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut,
Tall Englishman in Shostakovich’s The Gambler, the
Cook in Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges and
the Doctor in Verdi’s Macbeth. Recent engagements
have included Melchtal and Walter Furst in Rossini’s
Guillaume Tell for Irish National Opera, Pistola in
Verdi’s Falstaff for Grange Park Opera, Enrico in
Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and the Commendatore
in Mozart’s Don Giovanni for Longborough Festival
Opera, Dziemba in Moniuszko’s Halka at the Theater
an der Wien, Penderecki’s St Luke Passion and
Hobson in Peter Grimes for Polish National Opera
and Opéra de Lyon.
Imelda Drumm has enjoyed a
successful international singing
career as a soloist. She is a graduate
of the National Opera Studio, London
(1997), sponsored by Glyndebourne
Festival Opera, and the Royal Irish
Academy of Music, where she received her doctorate
in 2017. For over 30 years she has forged strong
relationships with opera companies in the UK and
here in Ireland. She made her INO debut as Amneris
in Verdi’s Aida at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre in
2018. Other INO roles include the title role in Conor
Linehan’s The Patient Woman as part of 20 Shots of
Opera in 2020, Klytämnestra in Strauss’s Elektra in
2021 and Hedwige in Rossini’s William Tell in 2022.
She studied singing with Veronica Dunne, and is staff
lecturer in vocal pedagogy and singing at the Royal
Irish Academy of Music. She takes a keen interest in
vocal pedagogy, particularly the method of singing
influenced by the Italian school of bel canto. Her
doctoral research investigated the action of female
reproductive hormones on professional classical
singers and is available in TARA, the open access,
online research repository at Trinity College Dublin.
Andrew Masterson is a lyric tenor
from Omagh, Co. Tyrone, and a
core member of the Irish National
Opera Chorus. He sang his first role
for the company last year as Der
Wirt (Landlord) in Strauss’s Der
Rosenkavalier. He is an alumnus of the Royal Northern
College of Music, and graduated with distinction in
both his Masters and Postgraduate Diploma. His
desire to pursue a career in vocal music derived from
his Bachelor of Music degree at Queen’s University
Belfast. Venues he has performed in include the Royal
Albert Hall in London, the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in
Dublin, the Grieghallen in Bergen, Oslo Opera House,
and the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. He has recently
joined the Edvard Grieg Kor, which performed at the
2023 BBC Proms with the London Philharmonic
Orchestra under Edward Gardner. He is also a regular
guest tenor in the chorus of Bergen Nasjonale Opera.
He was one of last year’s recipients of a BBC NI and
Arts Council NI Young Musicians’ Platform Award,
supported by the UK National Lottery.
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