The Long Story…

My first musical memory is of being four years old, walking around a wholesale warehouse with my mother, both of us speak-singing random things about each item we encountered. It was another 17 years before I discovered that my almost constant sung commentaries of my day were known in the classical singing business as ‘recitative’.

I studied music theory and piano from age 6, but singing was always my preferred method of expression. Given the then unfortunate lack of singing teachers in our corner of the west of Ireland, I volunteered/begged to be involved in any and every kind of performance opportunity possible. From school Masses, to school talent competitions, to learning every word of every Disney movie and movie musical and performing one-woman (child) shows to my family, or simply to myself, using my Barbies and Kens as puppets.

Every year, our primary school would be the audience for the final dress rehearsal of the local secondary school’s annual musical, and every year, I sat front and centre, full invested in the stories being told, laughing and crying and counting down the days until I could finally be on that stage. I eventually got to be in a few scenes of ‘Oliver!’, but at 16, playing Maria von Trapp in ‘The Sound of Music’ cemented my desire to make a life on the stage. I will be forever grateful to my primary and secondary school teachers for their endless encouragement, and to Finola Higgins and the Cill Aodain Choral Society for the singing and stage opportunities which stimulated and sustained me in my teenage years.

I began my singing training at DIT Conservatory of Music in Dublin with Deirdre Grier-Delaney and Trudi Carberry. Having arrived to my Bachelors with the intention of becoming the new Julie Andrews/Disney Princess, in my first week I was introduced to opera, oratorio, and art song and I fell rather swiftly and deeply in love. (I also met Fach and diaphragmatic support for the first time, but those relationships took a little longer to become amicable…) During my undergrad years, I competed at the Feiseanna Ceoil in Dublin, Sligo, and Ballymena and won a number of first prizes for French Song, German Lieder, Irish Art Song, Operetta, and Baroque Opera.

I continued to train as a soprano at the Royal Academy of Music, London, studying under Julie Kennard and Robert Aldwinckle. There, I had the opportunity to learn from and work with seasoned industry professionals such as Barbara Bonney, Laurence Cummings, John Ramster, Robert Tear, Kathryn Harries, Ian Patridge, Richard Stokes and more. I successfully auditioned for the roster of the Josephine Baker Trust, through which I gained a vital wealth of oratorio experience, and concluded my Masters by winning the Clifton Prize for Best Recital.

Entering the freelance world, I began to train with Jennifer Dakin, and soon after made my professional operatic début as Zirphile/La Fée in the premiere British staging of Rameau’s ‘Achante et Céphise’ at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London, directed by Christopher Cowell. I then made my debuts in the roles of Dinah Trouble in Tahiti (The Little Opera Company, London) conducted by Christopher White (now at Deutsche Oper), Venus Orphée aux Enfers (Opera’r Ddraig, Cardiff), Anna Kennedy Maria Stuarda (Opera Seria, Manchester), Amor Orfeo ed Euridice (Opera Seria, Manchester), and Servilia La clemenza di Tito (Opus Opera, London).

I also traversed the UK singing in oratorios, sacred cantatas, and Requiem Masses by Bach, Brahms, Händel, Haydn, and Mozart, though the oratorio highlights of my UK years were surely singing the soprano solos singing the soprano solos in Weber’s Mass in E-flat at St. John’s Smith Square, and in a sold-out, candlelit performance of Mozart’s Mass in Cminor at St. Martin-in-the-Fields as part of the Brandenburg Choral Festival of London.