La bohème livestream concert programme
Irish National Opera and Bord Gáis Energy Theatre
Irish National Opera and Bord Gáis Energy Theatre
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PUCCINI<br />
LA BOHÈME
IRISH NATIONAL OPERA<br />
PRINCIPAL FUNDER<br />
GIACOMO PUCCINI 1858-1924<br />
LA BOHÈME<br />
1896<br />
CORPORATE<br />
PARTNER<br />
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH BORD GÁIS ENERGY THEATRE<br />
OPERA IN FOUR ACTS<br />
Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica after Henry Murger’s book<br />
Scènes de la vie de <strong>bohème</strong>.<br />
First performance, Teatro Regio, Turin, 1 February 1896.<br />
First Irish performance, in English, Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, 25 August 1897.<br />
SUNG IN ITALIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES<br />
Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes, including 20 minute interval after Act II.<br />
A separate studio recording is being made for future release.<br />
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
Ronan O’Reilly and all at the Artane School of Music, Stephen<br />
Faloon, Claire Whelan and all at Bord Gáis Energy Theatre.<br />
Gavin Quinn, Aedín Cosgrove and Pan Pan Theatre.<br />
PERFORMANCE 2021<br />
Livestream from Bord Gáis Energy Theatre Dublin<br />
Saturday 13 March<br />
03
SYNOPSIS<br />
The opera is based<br />
on Henry Murger’s<br />
Scènes de la vie de<br />
<strong>bohème</strong> (Scenes of<br />
Bohemian Life) and<br />
depicts life in the<br />
<strong>La</strong>tin quarter in Paris<br />
around 1830.<br />
ACT I<br />
We find ourselves in a garret where the artist Marcello is painting a<br />
picture while Rodolfo, a poet, is busy on the last act of his new drama.<br />
It is very cold and as they have no fire they use the manuscript of<br />
Rodolfo’s play for fuel. The unexpected happens. After Colline,<br />
a philosopher, arrives with books he hasn’t been able to sell, he<br />
is followed by the musician Schaunard, who brings home food<br />
and wine and relates the story of his good fortune. The others are<br />
too hungry to listen, but just go on eating and drinking. They are<br />
interrupted by a knock at the door. It is the landlord Benoît, who is<br />
calling to collect the rent. The bohemians sit him down and ply him<br />
with enough drink to get him drunk. He tells them about some of his<br />
amorous episodes, and when he incidentally remarks that he is a<br />
married man, they fake indignation and throw him out. The quartet<br />
decide to spend the rent money on dinner at the neighbourhood’s<br />
Café Momus. Three of them head off while Rodolfo remains to put<br />
the finishing touches to his drama. He makes little progress, and<br />
indeed is rather glad to find his work interrupted by the entrance<br />
of the seamstress Mimì, a neighbour, whose candle blew out as<br />
she was going upstairs. Rodolfo lights it and she goes off, only to<br />
return again, saying she has forgotten her key. Then both candles<br />
go out, and the pair stumble against one another in their search<br />
for it. Rodolfo finds the key and conceals it in his pocket so they<br />
can spend more time together. They start sharing parts of their<br />
life-stories. From outside they hear the voices of Rodolfo’s friends<br />
calling. The two, who have fallen for each other, decide to go<br />
together to the café. They leave, declaring their everlasting love.<br />
ACT II<br />
We are brought to the Café Momus, which is situated in a busy street.<br />
There is a great crowd of people, buying and selling. The bohemians<br />
are enjoying the good things provided by the café. Musetta, an old<br />
flame of Marcello’s, arrives with her latest<br />
conquest, Alcindoro, a rich, elderly sugardaddy.<br />
After several vain attempts to attract<br />
Marcello’s attention, she pretends to suffer from<br />
the effects of a tight shoe, and while her new<br />
admirer is away at the shoe-makers to have the<br />
shoe stretched, Musetta and Marcello become<br />
reconciled. When the time comes to pay the bill<br />
they realise that that Schaunard’s money is all<br />
gone. Musetta solves the problem by leaving<br />
her rich admirer to settle it. They all traipse off<br />
following a band which is passing down the<br />
street. After they’re gone, the old man arrives<br />
back with Musetta’s shoe. The waiter hands him<br />
the bill. Alcindoro is staggered by the amount.<br />
ACT III<br />
We are at a toll gate on the Orléans road into<br />
Paris. It is early morning and the pedlars are<br />
arriving, each declaring to the guards the<br />
contents of their baskets. The snow is falling,<br />
covering the steps of the little tavern where<br />
Marcello has been hired to paint signs for the<br />
innkeeper. Rodolfo is staying at the inn, but<br />
the course of his love for Mimì has not run<br />
smoothly, and they broke up the previous night.<br />
Mimì comes to see him, and, encountering<br />
Marcello, tells him of her troubles. As they talk<br />
Rodolfo is heard approaching from the inn.<br />
Mimì conceals herself behind a tree. Rodolfo<br />
tells Marcello he wants a separation from Mimì.<br />
But he gets no sympathy from his friend, who<br />
instead upbraids him for stubbornness and<br />
bad temper. Rodolfo then seeks to explain<br />
his conduct by revealing the fact that Mimì<br />
is too delicate, and, in fact, is dying from<br />
consumption. The unfortunate Mimì overhears<br />
all this and her coughing betrays her presence.<br />
Rodolfo is stricken with remorse and pity,<br />
and although the lovers patch things up, they<br />
agree they will part in the spring. Musetta, in<br />
the meantime, has another violent quarrel with<br />
Marcello and leaves him in anger.<br />
ACT IV<br />
We are back in the garret in the <strong>La</strong>tin quarter.<br />
Again we see Marcello seeming to paint and<br />
Rodolfo seeming to write poetry. They are both<br />
out of sorts, so when Schaunard and Colline<br />
arrive with the dinner, they are glad of an<br />
excuse to abandon all pretence of work. The<br />
four engage in a burlesque of a great banquet,<br />
and when their fun is at its climax, Musetta<br />
and Mimì appear in the doorway. Mimi,<br />
who had taken a new lover, some well-to-do<br />
individual, has left him to return to spend her<br />
last moments with Rodolfo. Her disease has<br />
left her with scarcely strength enough to climb<br />
the stairs. They assist her to bed, and when<br />
Rodolfo and Mimì are left alone they recall<br />
their past happiness. Gradually Mimì sinks<br />
and dies in the arms of her lover.<br />
Adapted from Irish composer Harold R White’s<br />
Stories of the Operas, printed for the Carl Rosa Opera<br />
Company, the company which gave the Irish premiere<br />
of <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong> in 1897.<br />
04<br />
05
A YEAR OF REINVENTION<br />
FERGUS SHEIL<br />
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR<br />
DIEGO FASCIATI<br />
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR<br />
We’re delighted to welcome you to our socially-distanced <strong>concert</strong><br />
performance of Puccini’s <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong> with our regular partners at<br />
Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. We had originally planned a fully-staged<br />
production by director Orpha Phelan and designer Nicky Shaw,<br />
the team who brought us such a magical vision of Rossini’s <strong>La</strong><br />
Cenerentola in November 2019. Circumstances don’t allow this just<br />
now, although we will return to it later. Instead we have kept the cast<br />
together to bring you tonight’s <strong>livestream</strong>ed <strong>concert</strong> performance.<br />
The performance has involved exceptionally meticulous preparation.<br />
It could only have been achieved in a large venue like Bord Gáis<br />
Energy Theatre. We have the orchestra on the stage (everybody a<br />
minimum of two meters from each other), the chorus in the stalls<br />
(distanced from each other and the stage), the children’s choir in<br />
the circle, and the marching band for the second act occupying<br />
two boxes within the theatre. Singers who travelled from abroad<br />
were quarantined and tested, performers were kept apart by using<br />
different entrances and exits to the theatre. Everyone and everywhere<br />
was regularly sanitised, and even toilets were strictly allocated.<br />
The act of coming together to make music was only possible by<br />
making sure nobody could come close to anybody else.<br />
It’s just 12 months since our daily lives became dominated by the<br />
effort of dealing with the pandemic. For many of us it’s been a year<br />
like none other in terms of lost loved ones, disrupted livelihoods,<br />
and unparalleled separation and isolation. Cultural life, too, was<br />
hit early and hard and, like other arts organisations, Irish National<br />
Opera has had to cancel everything that was originally planned<br />
for performance since March 2020. And we’re still facing an<br />
immediate future in which uncertainty remains the only certainty.<br />
Yet for INO the past year turned out to be a time of busy reinvention,<br />
of feverish behind the scenes activity, of planning with ever-shifting<br />
sands, and of projects that have had to be continually adapted to<br />
the unpredictability of the world in which we have been living.<br />
<strong>La</strong>st March, the speedy and supportive intervention of the<br />
Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon meant that, unlike some<br />
long-established international companies, we were able to pay<br />
cancellation fees to the artists that had been rehearsing our<br />
production of Bizet’s Carmen. Happily, that production is not lost.<br />
It is currently rescheduled for our next season.<br />
Early in the pandemic, we turned our focus to a series of online<br />
<strong>concert</strong>s, Friday Opera Sessions, in partnership with Insituto<br />
Italiano di Cultura, Dublino. Singers and pianists made recordings<br />
remotely in their own homes, an undertaking that turned out to<br />
be a logistical and artistic challenge beyond what anyone had<br />
imagined in advance. But it all helped keep a sense of operatic<br />
community in a difficult time.<br />
We could not perform Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio,<br />
but we reimagined the opera as an innovative eight-part online<br />
mini-series, Seraglio. It was mini only in the sense that it consisted<br />
of excerpts. Seraglio employed a full cast, the Irish National Opera<br />
Chorus and the Irish Chamber Orchestra – 55 artists, all making<br />
recordings in their own homes. <strong>La</strong>ter in the year we managed to<br />
<strong>livestream</strong> a <strong>concert</strong> performance of this remarkable score from<br />
the National Opera House, Wexford.<br />
The optimism of the summer allowed us to hope we could<br />
bounce back in September and present our 2019 world premiere<br />
06<br />
07
production of Brian Irvine and Netia Jones’s Least Like The Other.<br />
Brian and Netia’s opera, performed by a single singer and three<br />
actors, is a technical tour-de-force. It created a real buzz at its<br />
premiere at the Galway International Arts Festival, and we are<br />
longing to share it more widely with audiences. We rehearsed up<br />
to dress rehearsal for performances at the Dublin Theatre Festival<br />
last year, but eventually could not perform. We did, however, make<br />
a ground-breaking new version of the piece with pre-recorded<br />
orchestra and hi-tech 16-channel surround sound, and we also<br />
filmed the work for a future installation version. We will share this<br />
remarkable opera with you at the earliest opportunity.<br />
Our November 2020 production of Rossini’s epic William Tell – the<br />
first in Dublin since 1877 – is now also rescheduled to a future<br />
season. In its place we pivoted to another project, one no less<br />
ambitious although artistically completely different. Within the<br />
span of six months we commissioned 20 Shots of Opera, 20 new<br />
short operas, rehearsed, recorded, filmed, edited and released<br />
them online. We engaged an enormous community of talent –<br />
over 160 individuals – with everyone working in very small groups<br />
in controlled environments. These short operas attracted huge<br />
national and international acclaim, including a five-star review from<br />
The Observer. We are grateful to all the artists and technicians who<br />
collaborated with us to realise this project so imaginatively. And we<br />
thank the many generous donors who further supported us last year<br />
by commissioning some of the works.<br />
For the moment, all of our work has to take place online. This<br />
includes everything from coaching sessions for the artists in our<br />
ABL Aviation Opera Studio to writing and design workshops for<br />
participants in Out of the Ordinary, our community virtual reality<br />
opera, which has been shortlisted for a 2021 Fedora Digital Prize.<br />
We will announce new projects and productions for the first part of<br />
the year shortly, and our hope is that health regulations will allow<br />
us to present live performances to live audiences in the second<br />
half of this year.<br />
We have not been working alone. We applaud the extraordinary<br />
achievements of the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht,<br />
Sport and Media, Catherine Martin, on behalf of the arts sector.<br />
Her efforts to save, protect and support the arts have been both<br />
timely and far-sighted. The Arts Council is our principal funder.<br />
We are grateful not only for the council’s financial investment but<br />
also for all the guidance, support, flexibility and understanding it<br />
has provided since the very start of the pandemic. Finally, a thank<br />
you to our donors who continue to support the cause of opera<br />
in Ireland with their generous donations, and to all those who<br />
continue to send us messages of support and encouragement.<br />
Your generosity makes a world of difference.<br />
We hope you enjoy Celine Byrne’s first time to sing Mimì – her<br />
favourite role – with an Irish opera company every bit as much as<br />
we have enjoyed bringing her performance to you.<br />
In the final months of the year we also managed to <strong>livestream</strong> a<br />
series of <strong>concert</strong>s from historic buildings in collaboration with the<br />
Office of Public Works. These featured three of our top artists –<br />
mezzo-sopranos Sharon Carty, Tara Erraught and Paula Murrihy.<br />
FERGUS SHEIL<br />
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR<br />
DIEGO FASCIATI<br />
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR<br />
08<br />
09
IRISH NATIONAL OPERA<br />
FRIENDS & PATRONS 2021<br />
SHOW YOUR PASSION<br />
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INO FRIENDS<br />
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Mr Trevor Hubbard<br />
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Miriam McNally & Pat Dolan<br />
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TU Dublin Operatic Society<br />
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Niall Williams<br />
Irish National Opera is Ireland’s leading producer of highquality<br />
and accessible opera at home and on great operatic<br />
stages abroad. We are passionate about opera and its unique<br />
power to move and inspire. We showcase world-class singers<br />
from Ireland and all over the world. We work with the cream<br />
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designers and choreographers. We produce memorable and<br />
innovative performances to a growing audience. And we offer<br />
crucial professional development to nurture Ireland’s most<br />
talented emerging singers.<br />
Our aim is to give everyone in Ireland the opportunity to<br />
experience the best of opera. In our three-year history, we have<br />
presented over 100 performances and won industry praise<br />
both nationally and internationally for our ground-breaking<br />
work. Through our productions, <strong>concert</strong>s, masterclasses,<br />
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We want to do more, and we need your help to do it.<br />
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Dominica Williams, Javier Ferrer & Sophia Preidel in INO, United Fall 7 Galway International<br />
Arts Festival’s production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, July 2018. Photo by Pat Redmond.<br />
10<br />
23 11
CAST IN ORDER OF SINGING<br />
Marcello David Bizic Baritone<br />
a painter<br />
Rodolfo Merūnas Vitulskis Tenor<br />
a poet<br />
Colline John Molloy Bass<br />
a philosopher<br />
Schaunard Ben McAteer Baritone<br />
a musician<br />
Benoît Eddie Wade Baritone<br />
their landlord<br />
Alcindoro Eddie Wade Bass<br />
a state councillor and Musetta’s admirer<br />
Mimì Celine Byrne Soprano<br />
a seamstress<br />
Musetta Anna Devin Soprano<br />
a grisette<br />
Parpignol Fearghal Curtis Tenor<br />
an itinerant toy vendor<br />
Doganiere David Howes Bass-Baritone<br />
a customs official<br />
Sergente Rory Dunne Bass-Baritone<br />
a customs sergeant<br />
COVERS<br />
CREATIVE TEAM<br />
Conductor<br />
Production & Lighting Designer<br />
Assistant Conductor & Chorus Director<br />
Répétiteur<br />
Assistant Répétiteur<br />
IRISH NATIONAL OPERA CHORUS<br />
Soprano<br />
Lorna Breen<br />
Rheanne Breen<br />
Kelli-Ann Masterson<br />
Maria Matthews<br />
Muireann Mulrooney<br />
<strong>La</strong>uren Scully<br />
Mezzo-sopranos<br />
Margaret Bridge<br />
Madeline Judge<br />
Aebh Kelly<br />
Sarah Kilcoyne<br />
Bríd Ní Ghruagáin<br />
Katie Richardson<br />
McCrea<br />
Sergio Alapont<br />
Sinéad McKenna<br />
Elaine Kelly<br />
Aoife O’Sullivan<br />
Luke <strong>La</strong>lly Maguire<br />
Tenor<br />
Ciarán Crangle<br />
Fearghal Curtis<br />
Keith Kearns<br />
Philip Keegan<br />
Richard Shaffrey<br />
Jacek Wislocki<br />
CHILDREN’S CHORUS INDEPENDENT THEATRE WORKSHOP<br />
Iñaki Calvo<br />
Kate Carbery<br />
Catherine Coll<br />
Saibh Collier<br />
Genevieve Costello<br />
Doherty<br />
Amy Deane<br />
Tom Egan (soloist)<br />
Lexi Forde<br />
Emma Griffin<br />
Priya Hobson<br />
Joya Hobson<br />
Aibhin Hughes<br />
Elijah Kenny<br />
Katie Alma Lynch<br />
Lucy Mahon<br />
Ellen McAuliffe<br />
Tess Mullarkey<br />
Bass<br />
Desmond Capliss<br />
Rory Dunne<br />
Jakob Mahase<br />
Matthew Mannion<br />
Kevin Neville<br />
Fionn Ó hAlmhain<br />
Ruby Mulligan<br />
Arthur Peregrine<br />
Eve Traynor<br />
Mimì Rachel Goode Soprano<br />
Musetta Kelli-Ann Masterson Soprano<br />
Colline David Howes Bass-Baritone<br />
12<br />
13
IRISH NATIONAL OPERA ORCHESTRA<br />
STAGE BAND<br />
First Violin<br />
Sarah Sew (leader)<br />
Lidia Jewloszewicz-Clarke<br />
David O’Doherty<br />
Siún Milne<br />
Emily Thyne<br />
Anita Vedres<br />
Jane Hackett<br />
Cliodhna Ryan<br />
Maria Ryan<br />
Cillian Ó Breacháin<br />
Second Violin<br />
<strong>La</strong>rissa O’Grady<br />
Aoife Dowdall<br />
Christopher Quaid<br />
Christine Kenny<br />
Justyna Dabek<br />
Katie O’Connor<br />
Rachel Du<br />
Robert Mahon<br />
Violas<br />
Adele Johnson<br />
John Murphy<br />
Lisa Dowdall<br />
Nathan Sherman<br />
Karen Dervan<br />
Anna Gioria<br />
Cellos<br />
Ailbhe McDonagh<br />
Yue Tang<br />
Yseult Cooper-Stockdale<br />
Aoife Burke<br />
Paula Hughes<br />
Alona Kliuchka<br />
Double basses<br />
Dominic Dudley<br />
Aura Stone<br />
Maeve Sheil<br />
Paul Stephens<br />
Flutes<br />
Susan Doyle<br />
Lina Andonovska<br />
Piccolo<br />
Kieran Moynihan<br />
Oboes<br />
Suzie Thorn<br />
Jenny Magee<br />
Cor Anglais<br />
David Agnew<br />
Clarinet<br />
Conor Sheil<br />
Suzanne Brennan<br />
Bass Clarinet<br />
Deirdre O’Leary<br />
Bassoons<br />
Ates Kirkan<br />
Clíona Warren<br />
Horns<br />
Liam Duffy<br />
Hannah Miller<br />
Jacqueline McCarthy<br />
Peter Mullen<br />
Trumpets<br />
Niall O’Sullivan<br />
Charles Cavanagh<br />
Eoghan Cooke<br />
Trombones<br />
Ross Lyness<br />
James Doherty<br />
Niall Kelly<br />
Bass Trombone<br />
Paul Frost<br />
Timpani<br />
Alex Petcu<br />
Percussion<br />
Richard O’Donnell<br />
Maeve O’Hara<br />
Caitríona Frost<br />
Brian Dungan<br />
Harp<br />
Dianne Marshall<br />
Piccolo<br />
Naoise Ó Briain<br />
Katie Hyland<br />
PRODUCTION TEAM<br />
Production Manager<br />
Rob Usher<br />
Stage Managers<br />
Sophie Flynn<br />
Stephanie Ryan<br />
Deputy Stage Manager<br />
Anne Kyle<br />
Technical Stage Manager<br />
Adrian Leake<br />
Italian Coach<br />
Annalisa Monticelli<br />
Audio Production<br />
Ergodos<br />
Audio Recording Engineer<br />
Simon Cullen<br />
ADDITIONAL THANKS<br />
Photography<br />
Shane McCarty<br />
Ros Kavanagh<br />
Trumpet<br />
Darren Moore<br />
Glen Carr<br />
Broadcast Facilities<br />
Streamcast<br />
Broadcast Director<br />
Bob Corkey<br />
Stream Production<br />
Seismic Events<br />
Lighting Programmer<br />
Eoin McNinch<br />
Chief Electrician<br />
Simon Burke<br />
Stage Crew<br />
Sean Dennehy<br />
Grace Halton<br />
Richard <strong>La</strong>mbert<br />
Gus McDonagh<br />
Davey Carpenter<br />
Promotional Video<br />
Mark Cantan<br />
Gansee Films<br />
Graphic Design<br />
Alphabet Soup<br />
Snare Drum<br />
Rónán Scarlett<br />
Kevin Corcoran<br />
Chaperone<br />
Gillian Oman<br />
Children’s Chorus Assistants<br />
Clarice Makarevitch<br />
Tara Rice<br />
Subtitles Operator<br />
Conleth Stanley<br />
Subtitles Translation<br />
Simon Rees<br />
Programme edited by<br />
Michael Dervan<br />
Ticketing<br />
DICE<br />
14<br />
15
BIOGRAPHIES<br />
SERGIO ALAPONT<br />
CONDUCTOR<br />
SINÉAD McKENNA<br />
PRODUCTION<br />
& LIGHTING DESIGNER<br />
ELAINE KELLY<br />
ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR<br />
& CHORUS DIRECTOR<br />
AOIFE O’SULLIVAN<br />
RÉPÉTITEUR<br />
Spanish-born Sergio Alapont<br />
is noted for his passionate and<br />
inspirational conducting. He<br />
divides his work evenly between<br />
symphonic and operatic and enjoys<br />
a successful career in <strong>concert</strong> and<br />
in the opera house. Orchestras he has conducted<br />
include Orquestra Sinfònica de Barcelona i Nacional<br />
de Catalunya, Bilbao Symphony, Copenhagen<br />
Philharmonic, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia,<br />
Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Orquesta de<br />
València, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, Orchestra<br />
della Toscana, Orchestra I Pomeriggi Musicali,<br />
Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI and Royal<br />
Scottish National Orchestra. Other recent highlights<br />
include Lehár’s The Merry Widow at Fondazione<br />
Arena di Verona, Mozart’s Idomeneo at Opéra<br />
national du Rhin in Strasbourg, Mascagni’s Cavalleria<br />
rusticana at the Illica Festival, Bellini’s Norma in<br />
Ferrara and Treviso, Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia<br />
at Den Norske Opera in Oslo, Verdi’s Attila at Teatro<br />
Massimo Bellini of Catania, Cagnoni’s Don Bucefalo<br />
at Wexford Festival Opera, Rota’s Il cappello di paglia<br />
di Firenze at Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino<br />
and Wexford, Donizetti’s Poliuto at Teatro Nacional<br />
de São Carlos of Lisbon, Martín y Soler’s Una cosa<br />
rara at Palau de Les Arts in Valencia and Puccini’s <strong>La</strong><br />
rondine at Minnesota Opera. He studied in Valencia,<br />
Madrid and Munich before continuing his training<br />
with Donato Renzetti at the Conservatory of Music in<br />
Pescara. He also studied with Jorma Panula, Helmuth<br />
Rilling, Marco Armiliato, Semyon Bychkov and<br />
Antonio Pappano. He won the Best Conductor Award<br />
at the GBOscars in 2016 and is making his INO debut<br />
in <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong>.<br />
Sinéad McKenna has received two<br />
Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards for<br />
Best Lighting Design and a Drama<br />
Desk nomination for Outstanding<br />
Lighting Design for a Musical. She<br />
previously designed Offenbach’s<br />
The Tales of Hoffman and Vivaldi’s Griselda for Irish<br />
National Opera. Other designs for opera and music<br />
include Mozart’s Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute and<br />
The Marriage of Figaro (Opera Theatre Company);<br />
Verdi’s <strong>La</strong> traviata (Malmö Opera); Britten’s The Rape<br />
of Lucretia (Irish Youth Opera) and A Midsummer<br />
Night’s Dream (Opera Ireland); The Wizard of Oz and<br />
Prodijig (Cork Opera House) and Angela’s Ashes: the<br />
Musical. Film and TV credits include Grace Jones:<br />
Bloodlight and Bami (Blinder Films), Bovinity (Tommy<br />
Tiernan) and Fitting In (Des Bishop), among others.<br />
She recently designed the set and lighting for Mark<br />
O’Rowe’s The Approach (<strong>La</strong>ndmark Productions) and<br />
has designed lighting for numerous other <strong>La</strong>ndmark<br />
productions. She has worked extensively with Druid<br />
Theatre, the Abbey Theatre, the Gate Theatre, West<br />
Yorkshire Playhouse, Dundee Rep, Cork Opera<br />
House, The Everyman, Cork, Rough Magic, Cahoots,<br />
CoisCéim Dance Theatre, Decadent Theatre, Gare St<br />
<strong>La</strong>zare Ireland, Lyric Theatre, Belfast, Fishamble, The<br />
Corn Exchange, THISISPOPBABY, Siren Productions,<br />
Second Age, The Performance Corporation, Semper<br />
Fi and Gúna Nua.<br />
Elaine Kelly is a multi-awardwinning<br />
choral and orchestral<br />
conductor based in Ireland. She<br />
is the ABL Aviation Opera Studio<br />
conductor for the 2019-20 season<br />
during which she is assistant<br />
conductor and chorus director for INO productions.<br />
She is currently the conductor of the University of<br />
Limerick Orchestra, and musical director to the<br />
highly-successful choir, Cantate. She was musical<br />
director of the Dublin Symphony Orchestra from<br />
2017-19. In 2014 she won first prize in the inaugural<br />
ESB Feis Ceoil Orchestral Conducting Competition.<br />
In <strong>concert</strong>, she has conducted the RTÉ Concert<br />
Orchestra, Cork Concert Orchestra, CSM Symphony<br />
Orchestra, Cork Fleischmann Orchestra and<br />
the Fleischmann Choir. She was also assistant<br />
conductor for Opera Collective Ireland’s production<br />
of Handel’s Agrippina with the Irish Chamber<br />
Orchestra, in association with Northern Ireland<br />
Opera. She is a graduate of the CIT Cork School of<br />
Music (CSM). She completed her BMus Degree in<br />
2011 and continued her studies in CSM, achieving a<br />
First Class Honours Masters Degree in Conducting.<br />
Aoife O’Sullivan was born in Dublin<br />
and studied at the College of Music<br />
with Frank Heneghan and later at<br />
the RIAM with John O’Conor. She<br />
graduated from Trinity College<br />
Dublin with an honours degree in<br />
music. In September 1999 she began her studies<br />
as a Fulbright scholar at the Curtis Institute of Music<br />
and in 2001 she joined the staff there for her final two<br />
years. She was awarded the Geoffrey Parsons Trust<br />
Award for accompaniment of singers in 2005. She<br />
has worked on the music staff at Wexford Festival<br />
Opera, and on three Handel operas for Opera Theatre<br />
Company, Orlando, Xerxes, and Alcina, and for Opera<br />
Ireland on Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and<br />
Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She also<br />
worked at the National Opera Studio in London and<br />
was on the deputy coach list for the Jette Parker<br />
Young Artist Programme at the Royal Opera House<br />
Covent Garden. She has played for masterclasses<br />
including those given by Malcolm Martineau, Ann<br />
Murray, Thomas Allen, Thomas Hampson and Anna<br />
Moffo. She worked on Mozart’s Zaide at the Britten<br />
Pears Young Artist Programme and on Britten’s<br />
Turn of the Screw for the Cheltenham Festival with<br />
Paul Kildea. She has appeared at the Wigmore Hall<br />
in <strong>concert</strong>s with Ann Murray (chamber versions of<br />
Mahler and Berg), Gweneth Ann Jeffers, Wendy Dawn<br />
Thompson and Sinéad Campbell Wallace. She is now<br />
based in Dublin where she works as a répétiteur and<br />
vocal coach at TU Dublin Conservatoire and also<br />
regularly for INO.<br />
16<br />
17
BIOGRAPHIES<br />
LUKE LALLY MAGUIRE<br />
ASSISTANT RÉPÉTITEUR<br />
CELINE BYRNE<br />
SOPRANO<br />
MIMÌ<br />
ANNA DEVIN<br />
SOPRANO<br />
MUSETTA<br />
MERŪNAS VITULSKIS<br />
TENOR<br />
RODOLFO<br />
Dublin-born pianist Luke <strong>La</strong>lly<br />
Maguire, who is a current member<br />
of Irish National Opera’s ABL<br />
Aviation Opera Studio, began<br />
playing piano at the age of thirteen.<br />
In September 2020, he graduated<br />
with a First Class Honours in the Bachelor of Music<br />
performance degree from TU Dublin Conservatoire<br />
(formerly DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama)<br />
where he studied piano under Mary Lennon. He has<br />
also taken part in piano masterclasses and lessons<br />
with Christopher Elton, Barry Douglas, Vanessa<br />
<strong>La</strong>tarche, Simon Trpčeski, Leon McCawley, Hilary<br />
Coates and Thérèse Fahy. He is an experienced<br />
performer and a multiple prize-winner for both solo<br />
and collaborative performance in major Irish national<br />
competitions and festivals including Feis Ceoil and<br />
Sligo Feis Ceoil where, in 2019, he was awarded the<br />
€1,000 Piano Bursary sponsored by Eileen and Ray<br />
Monahan. He is in demand as a vocal accompanist<br />
and his keen interest in vocal performance has led<br />
to him performing in vocal masterclasses with Orla<br />
Boylan, Patricia Bardon and Julian Hubbard. In 2019<br />
he acted as répétiteur and harpsichordist for TU<br />
Dublin Conservatoire’s production of Purcell’s Dido<br />
and Aeneas. He is passionate about piano pedagogy<br />
and currently teaches piano in the Newpark Academy<br />
of Music, Blackrock.<br />
Celine Byrne, who won First Prize<br />
and gold medal at the Maria<br />
Callas International Grand Prix in<br />
Athens in 2007, is an INO Artistic<br />
Partner and made her company<br />
debut in the title role of Puccini’s<br />
Madama Butterfly in 2019. Recent performances<br />
include Magda in Puccini’s <strong>La</strong> rondine (Minnesota<br />
Opera), Madama Butterfly (Staatstheater Kassel), Die<br />
Marschallin in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (Santiago),<br />
Marietta/Marie in Korngold’s Die tote Stadt (RTÉ<br />
NSO), Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (Israeli<br />
Opera), the title role in Puccini’s Tosca (Mikhailovsky<br />
Opera, St Petersburg), Liù in Puccini’s Turandot (Oper<br />
Leipzig and Deutsche Oper am Rhein), Elisabeth in<br />
Verdi’s Don Carlo (Deutsche Oper am Rhein) and<br />
Mimì in <strong>La</strong> bohéme (Hamburg State Opera). She<br />
made her operatic debut as Mimì with Scottish Opera<br />
in 2010. She made her debut at the Royal Opera<br />
House, Covent Garden, in Dvořák’s Rusalka in 2012,<br />
taking over the role at short notice. She returned to<br />
sing First Flower Maiden in Wagner’s Parsifal followed<br />
by Micaëla in Bizet’s Carmen and was due to perform<br />
Liù in Turandot. Engagements lost due to the Covid-19<br />
pandemic include her debut at the Opéra national<br />
de Paris, Mimì in <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong>) with Opera Hong Kong<br />
and <strong>concert</strong> appearances in Bangkok with Marcello<br />
Alvarez and several <strong>concert</strong>s with José Carreras, with<br />
whom she performs regularly. Future engagements<br />
include Liù in Turandot (Oper im Steinbruch at St<br />
Margarethen), Madama Butterfly (Bregenz Festival)<br />
and Micaëla in Carmen (INO).<br />
Irish soprano Anna Devin is widely<br />
admired for her “impeccable<br />
Baroque style” (Bachtrack), “vocal<br />
control...artistry and musicodramatic<br />
intelligence” (Opera<br />
News) and as “an ideal interpreter<br />
of Handel’s ‘sex-kitten’ roles” (Opera magazine).<br />
The 2019-20 season saw her perform Almirena in<br />
Handel’s Rinaldo with Glyndebourne on Tour and<br />
Michal in Handel’s Saul in the Théâtre du Châtelet<br />
in Paris. She also sang Handel’s Gloria with the<br />
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and returned to<br />
Zurich Opera House for a gala <strong>concert</strong> of works by<br />
Zelenka with <strong>La</strong> Scintilla and Riccardo Minasi. House<br />
debuts in 2017-18 included Madrid’s Teatro Real (as<br />
Celia in Mozart’s Lucio Silla) and Händel-Festspiele<br />
Karlsruhe (in the title role of Handel’s Semele ). She<br />
has also sung at the Royal Opera House, Covent<br />
Garden, <strong>La</strong> Scala, Milan, Welsh National Opera,<br />
Scottish Opera, Opera Collective Ireland, the Handel<br />
Festival in Göttingen, Early Opera Company and<br />
Mozartwoche Salzburg. Her appearance as Clotilde<br />
in Handel’s Faramondo for Brisbane Baroque earned<br />
her the Best Supporting Singer in an Opera at the<br />
2015 Helpmann Awards, Australia. Orchestras she<br />
has worked with include the Vienna Philharmonic,<br />
Hallé, RTÉ NSO, Ulster and Minnesota orchestras<br />
and Houston, Charlotte and Seattle symphonies. She<br />
has given masterclasses at the Royal Irish Academy<br />
of Music and coached at the Royal Academy Opera<br />
Course, London. In addition to her work on stage, she<br />
is an Ambassador for the British Dyslexia Association.<br />
She made her INO debut in 2019 as Pamina in<br />
Mozart’s The Magic Flute.<br />
Merūnas Vitulskis is considered<br />
one of the most charismatic and<br />
versatile Lithuanian singers of his<br />
generation. Recent and upcoming<br />
engagements include Pinkerton<br />
in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly<br />
(Lithuanian National Opera, Staatstheater Kassel,<br />
Opera North, Opéra de Lille, Ópera de Oviedo),<br />
Alfredo in Verdi’s <strong>La</strong> travaita (Lithuanian National<br />
Opera, Teatro di San Carlo, Naples), Rodolfo in<br />
Puccini’s <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong>, Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene<br />
Onegin (Lithuanian National Opera), and Cavaradossi<br />
in Puccini’s Tosca (Vilnius City Opera). He has also<br />
appeared with ABAO Bilbao Opera, St Margarethen<br />
Summer Festival and Teatro Verdi, Trieste, as<br />
Alfredo; Theater Klagenfurt as Macduff in Verdi’s<br />
Macbeth; and Oper Graz and Aalto Theater Essen<br />
as Rodolfo. He graduated from Kaunas Vaizganto<br />
high school where he had already begun to sing in<br />
the seventh grade, encouraged by music teacher<br />
Giedre Druskienės. He developed his musical skills<br />
at Gruodis Conservatory (2004-6) and continued<br />
his studies and graduated at the Music Academy<br />
with the vocal teacher Ohn Antanavicius. He has<br />
had great success in singing competitions, winning<br />
the first prize at the Stasys Baras Competition for<br />
Singers (2009), a diploma at the 19th international<br />
Societa Umanitaria Competition in Milan and the<br />
first prize at the Zenonas Paulauskas Competition for<br />
Young Singers. He sang his many of his major roles<br />
for the first time at the Lithuanian National Opera,<br />
where he worked as soloist from 2010, and he made<br />
his international operatic debut as Sir Hervey in<br />
Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at St Moritz in Switzerland.<br />
He makes his INO debut in <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong>.<br />
18<br />
19
BIOGRAPHIES<br />
DAVID BIZIC<br />
BARITONE<br />
MARCELLO<br />
BEN McATEER<br />
BARITONE<br />
SCHAUNARD<br />
JOHN MOLLOY<br />
BASS<br />
COLLINE<br />
EDDIE WADE<br />
BARITONE<br />
BENOÎT, ALCINDORO<br />
Serbian baritone David Bizic<br />
studied at the opera studio of Israeli<br />
Opera and won second prize at the<br />
prestigious 2007 Plácido Domingo<br />
Operalia Competition. He made his<br />
debut at the Metropolitan Opera<br />
in New York in 2014, singing Albert in Massenet’s<br />
Werther alongside Jonas Kaufmann and Sophie Koch,<br />
and reprised the role the following season. He also<br />
returned to New York as Marcello in Puccini’s <strong>La</strong><br />
<strong>bohème</strong>, to Toulon as Belcore in Donizetti’s L’elisir<br />
d’amore, sang Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen in Dijon<br />
and made his Italian debut in the same role at the<br />
Macareta Festival. He has also sung Sharpless in<br />
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in New York, the title role<br />
in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin in Metz and Reims,<br />
Enrico in Donizetti’s Lucia di <strong>La</strong>mmermoor in Toulon,<br />
Lescaut in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut in Barcelona<br />
and Escamillo in Carmen in Tel-Aviv. Praised for his<br />
interpretation of Mozart, he has sung the title role<br />
in Le nozze di Figaro (Angers, Nantes, Strasbourg,<br />
Toulon, Monte-Carlo, Bordeaux, Geneva, Gent),<br />
Publio in <strong>La</strong> clemenza di Tito (Avignon, Strasbourg,<br />
Montpellier), Masetto in Don Giovanni (Paris, Aixen-Provence<br />
Festival, Madrid), Leporello in Don<br />
Giovanni (Toulouse, Rennes, Montpellier, Moscow,<br />
Berlin, Valencia, Paris, Los Angeles, Chicago, Vienna),<br />
the title role in Don Giovanni (Maribor, Rouen) and Il<br />
Conte Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro (Saint-Étienne).<br />
Concert appearances include Fauré’s Requiem,<br />
Schubert’s Mass in A-flat, Haydn’s Nelson Mass,<br />
Falla’s <strong>La</strong> vida breve, Beethoven’s Choral Symphony,<br />
and Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem. He makes his<br />
INO debut in <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong>.<br />
Northern Irish baritone Ben<br />
McAteer trained at the National<br />
Opera Studio, London, and on the<br />
Guildhall School of Music & Drama<br />
opera course. Before embarking<br />
on a musical career, he studied<br />
chemistry at the University of St Andrews. Recent<br />
operatic highlights include Eisenstein in Johann<br />
Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and Marullo in Verdi’s<br />
Rigoletto for Northern Ireland Opera, Marcello in<br />
Puccini’s <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong> for Lyric Opera Productions,<br />
Fritz/Pierrot in a <strong>concert</strong> performance of Korngold’s<br />
Die tote Stadt for the RTÉ NSO, Earl of Mountararat<br />
in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe at English National<br />
Opera, Count Almaviva in Mozart’s The Marriage<br />
of Figaro and Father in Humperdinck’s Hansel<br />
and Gretel for INO, Father in Hansel and Gretel for<br />
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Pangloss & Voltaire<br />
in Bernstein’s Candide for West Green Opera and<br />
the Xi’an Symphony Orchestra, and Grand Inquisitor<br />
in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Gondoliers for Scottish<br />
Opera. For Scottish Opera he also created the role of<br />
James in Stuart MacRae’s The Devil Inside, for which<br />
he won Outstanding Performance in an Opera at the<br />
My Theatre Awards in Toronto. He also sang the title<br />
role in Le nozze di Figaro and toured as Guglielmo<br />
in Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte and Pish-Tush in Gilbert &<br />
Sullivan’s The Mikado. Notable <strong>concert</strong> performances<br />
include the world première of Mark-Anthony<br />
Turnage’s At Sixes and Sevens with the London<br />
Symphony Orchestra, Orff’s Carmina Burana at the<br />
Barbican, and performances of Vaughan Williams’<br />
Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Copland’s Old<br />
American Songs with the Ulster Orchestra.<br />
John Molloy is one of Ireland’s<br />
leading basses and hails from Birr.<br />
He studied at the DIT Conservatory<br />
of Music and Drama, the Royal<br />
Northern College of Music in<br />
Manchester and the National<br />
Opera Studio in London. He made his Irish National<br />
Opera debut in 2018 as Antonio in Mozart’s The<br />
Marriage of Figaro. Roles he has undertaken for Opera<br />
Theatre Company include Sparafucile in Verdi’s<br />
Rigoletto, Trinity Moses in Weill’s Mahagonny, the<br />
title role in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Zuniga<br />
in Bizet’s Carmen and he also appeared in Stephen<br />
Deazley’s children’s opera BUG OFF!!! Other roles<br />
include Alidoro in Rossini’s <strong>La</strong> Cenerentola (Scottish<br />
Opera), Guccio in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi (Royal<br />
Opera House, London), Masetto in Mozart’s Don<br />
Giovanni (English National Opera), Arthur in Peter<br />
Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse and Figaro in<br />
Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Nationale Reisopera,<br />
Netherlands), Le Commandeur in Thomas’s <strong>La</strong> cour<br />
de Célimène (Wexford Festival Opera), Angelotti in<br />
Puccini’s Tosca, Luka in Walton’s The Bear, Banco in<br />
Verdi’s Macbeth and Dulcamara in Donizetti’s L’elisir<br />
d’amore (OTC and NI Opera), Raimondo in Donizetti’s<br />
Lucia di <strong>La</strong>mmermoor (Opera Holland Park), Leporello<br />
in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Sarastro in Mozart’s Die<br />
Zauberflöte, Bonze in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly<br />
(Lyric Opera Productions), Snug in Britten’s A<br />
Midsummer Nights Dream (Opera Ireland) and Henry<br />
Kissinger in John Adams’s Nixon in China (Wide Open<br />
Opera). Concert repertoire he has sung internationally<br />
includes Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Verdi’s<br />
Requiem, Mendelssohn’s St Paul, Haydn’s Creation,<br />
Handel’s Messiah and Stravinsky’s Renard.<br />
British baritone Eddie Wade<br />
studied in London at the Guildhall<br />
School of Music and Drama, and<br />
the National Opera Studio. He was<br />
awarded both First Prize and the<br />
Verdi/Wagner Prize at the National<br />
Mozart Competition in 1996, and in the same season<br />
made his Royal OperaHouse debut as the Mandarin in<br />
Puccini’s Turandot. His many varied roles with leading<br />
companies include Peter in Humperdinck’s Hänsel<br />
und Gretel, Baron Douphol in Verdi’s <strong>La</strong> traviata,<br />
Fouquier-Tinville in Giordano’s Andrea Chénier and<br />
Julio in Thomas Ades’s The Exterminating Angel<br />
(Royal Opera House); Sharpless in Puccini’s Madama<br />
Butterfly (Danish National Opera); Prince Arjuna in<br />
Philip Glass’s Satyagraha, Mereia/Lepidus in Detlev<br />
Glanert’s Caligula (EnglishNational Opera); Peter in<br />
Hänsel und Gretel, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly,<br />
Melot in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Marcello in<br />
Puccini’s <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong>, Baron Douphol in <strong>La</strong> traviata,<br />
Sprecher in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Conte Almaviva<br />
in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Stárek in Janáček’s<br />
Jenůfa (Welsh National Opera); Sharpless in Madama<br />
Butterfly, the title role in Verdi’s Rigoletto, and the<br />
Executioner in James MacMillan’s Inés de Castro<br />
(Scottish Opera); Duclou in Leoncavallo’s Zazà (Opera<br />
Holland Park); Sonora in Puccini’s <strong>La</strong> fanciulla del<br />
West and Donald in Britten’s Billy Budd (Opera North);<br />
Baron Douphol in <strong>La</strong> traviata (Glyndebourne Festival<br />
Opera and Glyndebourne on Tour). Conductors he<br />
has worked with include Charles Mackerras, Mark<br />
Elder, Antonio Pappano, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Maurizio<br />
Benini, Carlo Rizzi, Philippe Auguin, Andris Nelsons,<br />
Jakub Hrůša and Mark Wigglesworth. He makes his<br />
INO debut in <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong>.<br />
20<br />
21
BIOGRAPHIES<br />
FEARGHAL CURTIS<br />
TENOR<br />
PARPIGNOL<br />
DAVID HOWES<br />
BASS-BARITONE<br />
DOGANIERE<br />
RORY DUNNE<br />
BASS-BARITONE<br />
SERGENTE<br />
IRISH NATIONAL OPERA<br />
ORCHESTRA<br />
Fearghal is from Dublin and is a<br />
graduate of the DIT Conservatory of<br />
Music and Drama, Dublin, and the<br />
Royal Academy of Music, London.<br />
In 2018 he created the role of<br />
Stephen Dedalus in Eric Sweeney’s<br />
Ulysses (Bloomsday Festival) and in 2017 sang the<br />
role of Taoiseach in the first modern performance of<br />
Robert O’Dwyer’s Eithne (Opera Theatre Company).<br />
He has sung in a number of INO productions,<br />
including Mozart’s The Magic Flute (First Armed Man/<br />
chorus), Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (ensemble), Verdi’s<br />
Aida (chorus), Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann<br />
(Spalanzani/chorus), and also in the chorus of the<br />
award-winning production of Donnacha Dennehy<br />
and Enda Walsh’s The Second Violinist (<strong>La</strong>ndmark<br />
Productions/Wide Open Opera). He has also sung<br />
Box in Sullivan’s Cox and Box and the title role in<br />
Rameau’s Pygmalion (Opera in the Open), Prologue/<br />
Quint in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and Orpheus/<br />
Mercury in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld<br />
(DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama), and Apollo/<br />
Spirit/Pastore/Ensemble in Monteverdi’s Orfeo<br />
(OTC), while he was an OTC Associate Young Artist<br />
in 2012-13. In <strong>concert</strong> he has also performed<br />
works by Handel, Bach, Marc-Antoine Charpentier,<br />
Mendelssohn, Schumann, Monteverdi and Barber.<br />
David Howes is a bass-baritone<br />
from Limerick where he studied<br />
with Olive Cowpar. He completed<br />
his BMus at the DIT Conservatory of<br />
Music and Drama and now studies<br />
with Robert Dean in London. He<br />
is a current member of Irish National Opera’s ABL<br />
Aviation Opera Studio and was a member of the<br />
inaugural Wexford Factory at last year’s Wexford<br />
Festival Opera, and also of the Northern Ireland<br />
Opera Studio. He created the roles of Jack and<br />
Flynn in Andrew Synnott’s Dubliners (Opera Theatre<br />
Company/Wexford Festival Opera), and has performed<br />
the title roles in Verdi’s Falstaff (Wexford Factory),<br />
Hans Krása’s Brundibár (Killaloe Chamber Music<br />
Festival), and Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (ZêzereArts<br />
Festival, Portugal). Other roles include Count Ceprano<br />
in Verdi’s Rigoletto (OTC), Buff in Mozart’s The Opera<br />
Director (Irish National Opera), Prince Yamadori in<br />
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Marchese d’Obigny<br />
in Verdi’s <strong>La</strong> traviata (Lyric Opera Productions),<br />
Sciarrone in Puccini’s Tosca (Wexford Festival Opera<br />
ShortWorks), Noye in Britten’s Noye’s Fludde, Father<br />
Trulove in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress and<br />
Quince in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.<br />
In August he will perform Badger and Parson in<br />
Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen at Longborough<br />
Festival Opera. In recital he has performed at Kilkenny<br />
Arts Festival and the National Concert Hall, and<br />
oratorio performances include Verdi’s Requiem and<br />
Beethoven’s Choral Symphony (Co-Orch Dublin),<br />
Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Puccini’s Messa di Gloria,<br />
Haydn’s Creation, Handel’s Messiah, and Requiems<br />
by Saint-Saëns and Brahms (Dún <strong>La</strong>oghaire Choral<br />
Society).<br />
Dublin-based bass-baritone Rory<br />
Dunne first trained as an actor<br />
in the Bull Alley Theatre Training<br />
Company Dublin, before going on<br />
to the TU Dublin Conservatoire,<br />
where he received a First Class<br />
Honours BMus degree. In recent years he has been<br />
a member of Irish National Opera’s ABL Aviation<br />
Opera Studio, the Wexford Factory (Wexford Festival<br />
Opera’s professional development academy), and has<br />
been engaged as a company artist with Cork Opera<br />
House. He has recently won both a 2021 Blackwater<br />
Valley Opera Festival Bursary Award, and a 2020 PwC<br />
Ireland and Wexford Festival Opera Emerging Young<br />
Artist bursary. He also won Navan Choral Festival’s<br />
Young Opera Voice Competition in 2019, as well as<br />
competitions in Feis Ceoil, Sligo Feis Ceoil, Northern<br />
Ireland Opera’s Glenarm Festival of Voice and several<br />
internal competitions in TU Dublin, including the<br />
Conservatoire’s Gold Medal. His roles include the<br />
title role in Verdi’s Falstaff (Wexford Factory/RTÉ),<br />
Valentine Greatrakes in Raymond Deane’s Vagabones<br />
(Opera Collective Ireland), Colline in Puccini’s <strong>La</strong><br />
<strong>bohème</strong> (Lyric Opera Productions) and The Mikado<br />
in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado (Cork Opera<br />
House), and covering Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen<br />
and Father in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (Irish<br />
National Opera). He makes his INO stage debut as the<br />
Sergeant in <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong>.<br />
The Irish National Opera orchestra is made up<br />
of leading freelance musicians based in Ireland.<br />
Members of the orchestra have a broad range of<br />
experience playing operatic, symphonic, chamber<br />
and new music repertoire. The orchestra plays for<br />
contemporary opera productions – Thomas Adès’s<br />
Powder Her Face and Brian Irvine’s Least Like The<br />
Other – as well as chamber reductions of larger<br />
scores – Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann and<br />
Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. The orchestra<br />
appeared in its largest formation to date in INO’s 2019<br />
production of Rossini’s Cinderella/<strong>La</strong> Cenerentola at the<br />
Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin. The orchestra has<br />
performed in 17 venues throughout Ireland.<br />
22<br />
23
ALL ABOUT MIMÌ AND ME<br />
Celine Byrne tells Michael Dervan about a great love-affair<br />
Avi Klemberg as Rodolfo and Celine Byrne as Mimì<br />
in Scottish Opera’s 2010 production.<br />
Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan<br />
HOW DO YOU RELATE TO THE<br />
CHARACTER MIMÌ?<br />
Before I answer that, I have to tell you that my<br />
love-affair with <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong> has been a big part of<br />
my life. It was my debut in 2010. It was also the<br />
last thing that I did before the lockdown, I sang it in<br />
Hamburg with Stephen Costello, and then I went to<br />
do it in America. Then, when I came back to Ireland<br />
for rehearsals for Irish National Opera’s Carmen,<br />
there was the lockdown. So it was the last thing I<br />
performed on stage and it’s now going to be my<br />
first time back with a live orchestra, conductor and<br />
singers since the lockdown. So I’m very excited.<br />
And it was the first and only opera that my father<br />
came to see, as well. He got so emotionally involved<br />
in it he couldn’t separate the character from me,<br />
and when I died on stage he swore to God that he’d<br />
never come to another opera again.<br />
Mimì is two characters in Henri Murger’s book,<br />
Scènes de la vie de <strong>bohème</strong>. Francine and Mimì<br />
become one character in the libretto for the opera.<br />
I identify a lot with her, and not always the way that<br />
directors would like me to. When she meets Rodolfo<br />
a lot of directors want to play that old-fashioned<br />
and coy. Like she’s very shy. And actually she’s not.<br />
She’s very... I won’t say calculated, but she knows<br />
what she’s doing. She’s forward. She has a little bit<br />
of a cheeky side that I don’t think we see enough of<br />
in many productions. I identify with her with regard<br />
to the fact that she’s playful. I’m very playful and<br />
very childish. I think you’ve observed some of the<br />
rehearsals that I’ve been in, and you can see that I’m<br />
always trying to have a bit of fun. I just love the fact<br />
that Rodolfo is a poet. And yet when she speaks,<br />
she’s more poetic than he is, even though he’s the<br />
poet. I love her poetry. I have the gift of the gab,<br />
and when I talk I can talk for hours and hours and<br />
go on and on, and I feel Mimì is like that as well.<br />
I think she’s sweet, and she’s innocent, but not in<br />
a sense that she’s naive. I think she’s innocent as<br />
in she has an open heart. Everything that she feels<br />
she wears on her sleeve. And I’m like that.<br />
HOW DO YOU RELATE TO HER ACTUAL<br />
SITUATION IN THE OPERA?<br />
Well, I relate to that being an actress and I<br />
have to act that part. Because, obviously I’m<br />
not dying of tuberculosis, I’ve no underlying<br />
sinister disease. That’s where my acting comes<br />
in. That’s my job, to portray that character. I<br />
identify with her personality, but there’s nothing<br />
else I can relate to in her position in life.<br />
DO YOU RELATE TO HER RELATIONSHIP?<br />
Yes. I can with how she falls in love so quickly. I<br />
can see how that can happen. Love at first sight.<br />
It’s a chemical reaction. It’s the endorphins<br />
being released when she sees him. She’s excited<br />
at him. Because she’s so open, I can see how she<br />
would fall in love so easily. Then, because she’s<br />
so reactive in her emotion, when he shows that<br />
he’s jealous, I can see how it doesn’t work out,<br />
either. It’s a very short relationship. There’s only<br />
three months between the time they get together<br />
and the time they break up.<br />
DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME<br />
YOU HEARD ANY OF HER ARIAS?<br />
Yes. I started singing late in life as everybody<br />
knows. I had my first singing lesson at 18 and I<br />
went to college when I was 23. The first music<br />
I was introduced to was Puccini, because my<br />
voice was a little bit more mature, because<br />
of my age and where it was colour-wise. I<br />
remember listening to Sì, mi chiamano Mimì<br />
for the first time and thinking, I can’t learn this<br />
aria, it’s too long. [She laughs] I’d only started<br />
singing. I didn’t know the language. I’d lived in<br />
Italy for a year, so I only had very basic Italian.<br />
So I thought, O my God, this aria is so long. But<br />
I always wanted to sing it, because I heard so<br />
many people sing it, it’s so popular.<br />
Everybody kept saying to me when I was in<br />
college, Oh, Celine, you are going to be a great<br />
Mimì and a great Countess, they were telling<br />
me all these roles, and I was, like, Oh, thank<br />
you, thank you. And then I was going home,<br />
researching – what are these roles, who are<br />
these people. I listened to a lot of recordings<br />
of <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong>, and I fell in love, I have to say,<br />
with the recording of Jussi Björling and Victoria<br />
de los Angeles. I just think that she was so<br />
wonderful in the drama. I think Maria Callas is a<br />
wonderful interpreter of music. She’s amazing.<br />
That’s why I fell in love with Maria Callas, she’s<br />
there on my wall – she points to a poster – but<br />
she never sang Mimì on stage.<br />
You can hear in a way with Victoria de los Angeles<br />
the effect of her being on that stage doing this<br />
25
Avi Klemberg as Rodolfo and<br />
Celine Byrne as Mimì in Scottish<br />
Opera’s 2010 production.<br />
Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan<br />
role so many times, like when she was singing –<br />
Celine sings Mimì asking Sono andati? (Have they<br />
gone?) as she’s left alone with Rodolfo in Act IV –<br />
I was feeling every breath and feeling every sigh<br />
in the music with her, without getting too much.<br />
I’m not one of these singers who go on about<br />
the nuances of the music and the wonderful<br />
orchestration and all that. I’m more of a realist.<br />
I live in the real world. I like to talk about music<br />
in a real way that people can communicate with<br />
me on the same level. The majority of people<br />
who come to see us are not musicians. They just<br />
want to see an opera. It was just the feeling of it.<br />
You feel the music. And she sang it in a way that<br />
really touched me.<br />
WHAT WAS THE FIRST TIME YOU HEARD<br />
THE OPERA LIVE IN THE OPERA HOUSE?<br />
I saw it for the first time in Covent Garden,<br />
when I was there covering the role of Donna<br />
Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and I sat in for a<br />
rehearsal. The boys impressed me. I saw these<br />
four boys come together. Obviously they’re hired<br />
in to sing and to act the roles of friends. But they<br />
really looked like they were friends. I was so<br />
convinced by this story. I just thought, I want to<br />
be part of that gang. It was the old production,<br />
which is now gone. [She’s talking about John<br />
Copley’s production, which was first seen in<br />
1974 and last seen in July 2015].<br />
WHAT WAS THE FIRST TIME YOU<br />
PERFORMED THE ROLE YOURSELF?<br />
In 2010 with Scottish Opera. That was my stage<br />
debut, my first job ever. It was the first opera<br />
in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre [or the Grand<br />
Canal Theatre, as it was called back then] and<br />
I’ve sung in the Bord Gáis every season since.<br />
I’m the only singer who’s sung in the Bord Gáis<br />
every season since it opened.<br />
That was a wonderful experience with Scottish<br />
Opera. It was during the ash cloud as well – the<br />
ash cloud created by the eruption of the Icelandic<br />
volcano Eyjafjallajökull in March 2010 which<br />
caused huge disruption to air travel. That was a<br />
crazy time, I remember, because I nearly missed<br />
the last performance in Inverness because I’d<br />
gone home during a break in the run. It took me<br />
13 hours to get back, because I had to go by boat<br />
from Belfast to Stranraer, and then try and get all<br />
the way to Inverness, up in the Scottish highlands.<br />
WHAT WAS THE JOURNEY LIKE,<br />
COMING TO YOUR FIRST OPERA ROLE?<br />
It was amazing. I thought, wow, I have a job. It<br />
was my first professional job and I thought it was<br />
a huge role to get. I felt very privileged. And I<br />
still feel very privileged when the phone rings or<br />
when I get an e-mail about a job offer. I was so<br />
delighted. I was nervous, because the conductor,<br />
Francesco Corti, was Italian and I thought, Oh<br />
no! I’ll say a word wrong and he’s going to kill me.<br />
[She laughs] It was a most wonderful experience.<br />
I didn’t know what to expect, so I was just myself.<br />
THAT PRODUCTION WAS RESET IN<br />
20TH-CENTURY AMERICA, NO?<br />
I don’t know where it was set. There was no<br />
specific place. The guy who directed it was<br />
a Tony Award-winner and it was a modern<br />
production, so there were no candles, there was<br />
electric cable. Look, I’m there to work. I’m there<br />
to do my job. So I just did what I was told by the<br />
director, because that’s his job. And I did my<br />
job. That’s the way I approached everything.<br />
HOW DIFFERENT HAVE YOUR MIMÌS<br />
BEEN IN DIFFERENT PRODUCTIONS?<br />
Very. The best one to date was Hamburg.<br />
A, because of the prestige of the house, it is<br />
so prestigious to sing there. B, because the<br />
production was just so beautiful. The set was<br />
one big house divided into different rooms, and<br />
then that house went up and down, so the first<br />
level then became the ground level. It was just<br />
very beautiful and very simple. And of course<br />
the singers around me were great. I just loved<br />
that it was traditional, in a way.<br />
Then of course I rehearsed the John Copley,<br />
which was very traditional as well, but I would<br />
say it was a little bit old-fashioned. Even though<br />
I thought it was presented so beautifully, it was<br />
more like presenting art than presenting a real<br />
person.<br />
The very first one I did, of course, it wasn’t<br />
traditional. But I enjoyed singing it. You can’t<br />
deny the music, no matter what production<br />
you’re in. You can’t deny the sumptuous music.<br />
Puccini loved the soprano voice, and I had the<br />
privilege to be the soprano in that production.<br />
I did another modern production, in Russia, in<br />
Moscow, the Novaya Opera. I enjoyed that as<br />
well, but that had a Doppelgänger, and I didn’t<br />
like that. Whatever about having a memory and<br />
looking back in the First Act or the Second Act<br />
or the Third Act, where you remember breaking<br />
up with Rodolfo, you remember meeting him,<br />
that’s OK. But it did not work, and I had to fight<br />
with my own soul, in a way, in the Fourth Act.<br />
Because you can’t really be a Doppelgänger<br />
and stand by and sing this touching Fourth Act<br />
26<br />
27
Johannes Leiacker’s set for Hamburg<br />
Staatsoper’s production of <strong>La</strong> <strong>bohème</strong>,<br />
directed by Guy Joosten and with<br />
costumes by Jorge Jara.<br />
while somebody else is acting it. You can’t. It<br />
has to be one. Because the connection with how<br />
you’re feeling has to be portrayed. And having a<br />
Doppelgänger, I was singing it and quasi feeling<br />
it, reminiscing. But I still did it, because it’s my<br />
job, and I gave it 100 percent, and people liked it,<br />
and that’s all that matters in the end.<br />
YOUR WORK GETS FILTERED NOT JUST<br />
THROUGH DIRECTORS’ IDEAS BUT ALSO<br />
THROUGH A CONDUCTOR’S APPROACH.<br />
HAVE CONDUCTORS TAKEN VERY<br />
DIFFERENT MUSICAL APPROACHES?<br />
Yeah, I have to say. In Hamburg Pier Giorgio<br />
Morandi was fantastic. He knew the opera<br />
inside out and he was breathing with the singer,<br />
the orchestra was breathing with the singer.<br />
There was time taken where you needed time.<br />
There was a wonderful flow, so you could<br />
actually express the emotion where you needed<br />
to. It was beautiful. Really beautiful.<br />
YOU’VE MENTIONED VICTORIA DE LOS<br />
ANGELES ALREADY. ARE THERE ANY<br />
OTHER MIMÌS THAT REALLY MATTER<br />
TO YOU IN THE SAME WAY?<br />
I can’t say. I only have a number one. I don’t<br />
have a number two or number three.<br />
CAN WE PLAY FANTASY OPERA FOR<br />
A MOMENT? IF YOU COULD SPLIT<br />
YOURSELF UP INTO MULTIPLE<br />
PEOPLE, EACH OF THEM WITH ALL<br />
THE REQUISITE SKILLS, AND NOT JUST<br />
SING IN LA BOHÈME, BUT CONDUCT,<br />
DIRECT IT AND DESIGN IT, WHAT MIGHT<br />
IT LOOK LIKE AND SOUND LIKE?<br />
Well, you see, I’m a traditionalist. I know it’s<br />
wonderful to bring music into the modern day<br />
and everything. But we have modern opera for<br />
that. I think it’s wonderful to have a balance<br />
between romantic music, classical music and<br />
I’ve seen some of the Mozart operas being<br />
reinvented, like Kasper Holten did a wonderful<br />
Don Giovanni, which I was proud to be part of.<br />
I think when you touch on Puccini ...maybe it’s<br />
because I’m so in love and so connected to the<br />
body of work. He wrote I think eleven operas and<br />
I’ve sung nine. I just think that if I was to conduct<br />
it... I’m going to be biased now and I’m going to<br />
say that the conductor who’s conducting this<br />
one is going to be the best, because he’s a Puccini<br />
expert, Sergio Alapont. Or Royal Opera House<br />
music director Antonio Pappano. The production<br />
would be traditional. The setting wouldn’t change.<br />
The music is amazing, but we have to be true to<br />
the libretto. There’s no point talking about a candle<br />
and then trying to bring it into the modern day.<br />
It doesn’t work. So it has to fit with the libretto.<br />
Just don’t touch it. Don’t mess with it.<br />
ANY SPECIFIC THINGS YOU WISH<br />
PEOPLE WOULDN’T DO?<br />
I wish tenors would sing the Act I aria in C rather<br />
than D flat, because the lower key is the one<br />
that Puccini originally wrote it in. Like, what<br />
are they trying to prove? I also think at the end,<br />
the Sono andati?, there’s a lot of repeated bits<br />
that need time. Specifically, there’s one part<br />
where she says, “My name is Mimì” and she<br />
repeats it twice, she sings it up the octave and<br />
then she drops it down the octave. I think it has<br />
only happened on a few occasions where I have<br />
won the battle and I’ve got to sing it my way.<br />
Because normally you’ve got to sing what the<br />
conductor wants. It’s so important when she’s<br />
singing up the octave that she’s singing, saying,<br />
Oh I remember I said this, and then she’s sick,<br />
she’s dying, so she takes a moment, she gives<br />
it all her energy, and then it kind of hits her that<br />
she’s ill again, and he needs that moment, and<br />
wants to say it again. She needs a moment, and<br />
then she drops down the octave. It’s quite clear<br />
in the music to me, that the reason she says it<br />
twice and an octave apart is because she loses<br />
the energy to finish what she’s saying. And then<br />
she tries to compose herself and start again.<br />
It’s important because it’s heartbreaking.<br />
There are so many moments that you can really<br />
captivate an audience with, without dragging<br />
the music and making her die forever. She<br />
doesn’t have to die forever. I’m not saying slow<br />
the music down. But there are parts where<br />
if you play them the right way you can really<br />
captivate an audience, because you really do<br />
feel it if you give the music time.<br />
That time has to be given. It’s not only about<br />
the director directing in a certain way, or how<br />
it looks aesthetically with regard to the set,<br />
or how it sounds in relation to the sonorous<br />
sound of the orchestra, or how it’s shaped by<br />
the conductor. It’s also about the expression<br />
of the artist. About how I want to express<br />
my Mimì, within the framework of what the<br />
conductor wants me to portray in relation to the<br />
characterisation as depicted by the director<br />
and within the framework of how it looks<br />
because of the set.<br />
28<br />
29
MUSIC FOR GALWAY & GALWAY 2020 PRESENT<br />
Cellissimo –<br />
Music for the Senses<br />
First edition of Galway’s International Cello Triennale<br />
25 – 31 MARCH 2021<br />
Online for 2021<br />
Seven days of all things cello and Galway<br />
– <strong>concert</strong>s from breathtaking locations,<br />
world premieres, exhibition, the GALWAY<br />
CELLO – and Music for the Senses,<br />
combining the best of international<br />
music with the best of local produce.<br />
Rediscover the cello at cellissimo.ie<br />
ABL AVIATION OPERA STUDIO<br />
ABL AVIATION OPERA<br />
STUDIO ARTISTS<br />
2020 – 2021<br />
Rachel Goode<br />
Soprano<br />
Kelli-Ann Masterson<br />
Soprano<br />
Aebh Kelly<br />
Mezzo-soprano<br />
David Howes<br />
Bass-baritone<br />
Elaine Kelly<br />
Conductor<br />
Amanda Feery<br />
Composer<br />
Davey Kelleher<br />
Director<br />
Luke <strong>La</strong>lly Maguire<br />
Répétiteur<br />
ABL Aviation, the international aviation investment company,<br />
took title sponsorship of INO Studio, Irish National Opera’s<br />
mentoring <strong>programme</strong>, in September 2019, as part of a multiannual<br />
agreement. The <strong>programme</strong> is now the ABL Aviation<br />
Opera Studio.<br />
Members of ABL Aviation Opera Studio are involved in all<br />
of Irish National Opera’s productions, large and small. They<br />
sing onstage in roles or in the chorus, understudy lead roles<br />
– enabling them to watch and emulate great artists at work –<br />
and, for non-singing members, they join in the world of opera<br />
rehearsals as assistants.<br />
Studio members also receive individual coaching, attend<br />
masterclasses and receive mentorship from leading Irish and<br />
international singers and musicians. Brenda Hurley, Head of<br />
Opera at the Royal Academy of Music, London, is the vocal<br />
consultant who guides our singers throughout the year. One<br />
of Ireland’s leading theatres, The Civic, Tallaght, works with<br />
the studio as a cultural partner, and the theatre’s artistic<br />
director, Michael Barker-Caven, is the studio’s stagecraft<br />
consultant.<br />
Other areas of specific attention are performance and<br />
language skills, and members are assisted in their individual<br />
personal musical development and given professional career<br />
guidance. They benefit from Irish National Opera’s national<br />
and international contacts and ABL Aviation Opera Studio<br />
also develops and promotes specially tailored events to help<br />
the members hone specific skills and showcase their work.<br />
For information contact Studio & Outreach Producer<br />
James Bingham at james@irishnationalopera.ie<br />
31
THE FIRST IRISH MIMÌ?<br />
Michael Dervan puzzles over who might claim to have been the first Irish singer to take on the role of Mimì.<br />
Cecile Lorraine photographed by<br />
Grouzelle Studios Sydney in 1901<br />
in connection with Musgrove Grand<br />
Opera Company performances of<br />
either Gounod’s Faust or Verdi’s<br />
<strong>La</strong> forza del destino in Australia.<br />
The inscription reads, “À Monsieur<br />
Thompson avec mes meilleurs vœux<br />
et remerciements pour sa gentillesse,<br />
Bien à vous, Cécile Lorraine, 1901.”<br />
Gerald Marr Thompson was drama,<br />
music and art critic of the Sydney<br />
Morning Herald.<br />
Who was the first Irish Mimì? Was it the great Margaret Burke-<br />
Sheridan, who sang the role at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome<br />
in February 1918? Indisputably yes, if your perspective is<br />
performances on major European stages. At home in Ireland<br />
Veronica Keary performed the role for the Dublin Operatic<br />
Society in 1934 and she was followed in 1938 by May Devitt,<br />
who would also give a string of performances for the Dublin<br />
Grand Opera Society in the 1940s.<br />
But there may be a case for a different singer, for Cecile Lorraine,<br />
the soprano who sang Mimì for the Carl Rosa Opera Company, the<br />
company which gave the first English performance in Manchester<br />
in April 1897, and the first Irish performance the following August.<br />
Dublin actually heard the work before the British capital. The work<br />
was not heard in London until the following October.<br />
Cecile Lorraine was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1868 or<br />
1869 and died in Hollywood, California, in 1941. In late 19thcentury<br />
newspapers she is described as having been born to<br />
English parents, to have trained in Europe, most notably under<br />
Mathilde Marchesi in Paris; and her career also took her beyond<br />
Europe and the US to Australia and New Zealand. She seems<br />
to have gravitated away from opera and towards the world of<br />
musical comedy, and obituaries describe her as a voice teacher.<br />
So, is there any Irish connection apart from her being the<br />
first singer ever to perform Mimì in Ireland. Well, maybe. Neil<br />
Gould’s book about the Dublin-born composer, conductor and<br />
cellist Victor Herbert (Victor Herbert, A Theatrical Life), has<br />
some information about an occasion when Cecile Lorraine<br />
and Victor Herbert worked together. In 1938 the singer wrote<br />
about it to the composer’s daughter.<br />
Dear Miss Herbert:<br />
In the year 1899 I sang two <strong>concert</strong>s with the<br />
Pittsburgh Symphony orchestra, your father the<br />
conductor. When I arrived for rehearsal... I was<br />
given a seat on the stage and when the orchestral<br />
number was terminated your father came over to<br />
bid me welcome and repeated, “Lorraine–Lorraine–<br />
French?” “No,” I replied, “Irish!” Whereupon he gave<br />
me a good hearty handshake, and told me I was<br />
thrice welcome.”<br />
How did it come about that someone born in Boston to<br />
“English” parents would describe herself as Irish? The clue<br />
may be in the surnames of her parents. Her father was a<br />
Reilly, her mother a Hathaway. If indeed her father was Irish<br />
that connection would today make her Irish enough to don<br />
the jersey and play international football for Ireland. And that<br />
would surely also make her the first Irish soprano ever to sing<br />
the role of Mimì.<br />
Her singing of the role at the Gaiety Theatre in 1897 was<br />
warmly praised by Irish music critics. The response to<br />
Puccini’s music was more divided. Here some excerpts from<br />
the reviews of the Carl Rosa production that were printed<br />
the morning after the first night in The Freeman’s Journal<br />
(relatively sympathetic to Puccini) and the Irish Independent<br />
(decidedly against the composer and the work).<br />
32<br />
33
Freeman’s Journal<br />
26 August 1897<br />
THE CARL ROSA OPERAS<br />
“LA BOHEME.”<br />
<strong>La</strong>st night the new opera of “<strong>La</strong> Boheme,” by Puccini, was<br />
performed for the first time at the Gaiety Theatre by the Carl Rosa<br />
Company. The House was crowded in every part, only standing<br />
room being available to those who had not secured seats or who<br />
came late. A sketch of the opera has already been given, the<br />
“Bohemians” being four reckless, adventurous youths and two<br />
fair but frail girls; and whilst from the characters and situations<br />
no one would expect any very profound or, indeed, impassioned<br />
music – though, indeed there are some tender love passages – on<br />
the other hand the work is very interesting because it is intensely<br />
modern in style and manner if not exactly of an original type.<br />
There is no overture but merely two or three bars of introduction,<br />
and then music and singers dash in media res, and Rudolph and<br />
Marcel are seen in their garret burning with enthusiasm for their<br />
respective arts of poetry and painting and shivering with physical<br />
cold. Throughout the scene, during their dialogue and after they<br />
are joined by their friends and the fainting Mimi, the musical<br />
treatment is in that style of melodious recitative or declamation,<br />
changeful and fitful, which distinguishes the modern operatic<br />
manner from the old-fashioned arias of prolonged and complete<br />
form. The orchestration is altogether to match, highly seasoned<br />
with kaleidoscopic changes and harmonious discords, and<br />
occasionally developing progression that would make the hair of<br />
the musical formalists of ancient date stand on end. But one good<br />
feature about the orchestration is that though it is thus highly<br />
coloured and seasoned is is never obstreperous, nor does it at<br />
any time drown the voices ...Mdlle Cecile Lorraine gave an artistic<br />
representation of the part of Mimi. The pathetic character of the<br />
role found in her a good exponent, and the vocal music of the part<br />
was rendered with tact and tenderness...<br />
Irish Independent<br />
26 August 1897<br />
THE CARL ROSA OPERA CO.<br />
“LA BOHEME.”<br />
...The Carl Rosa Company has introduced us to so many sterling<br />
works that when they hold forth promises of any new production<br />
we look naturally for an opera that is well worth hearing. But if the<br />
traditions of the company are to be maintained in this respect<br />
we are inclined to think that they had better leave such works<br />
as “<strong>La</strong> Boheme” severely alone so far as their Dublin season<br />
is concerned. The audience last night listened patiently to the<br />
performance, and quite recognised whatever merit it possessed.<br />
But it were a hard task to conceive a colder welcome to a new<br />
work than the audience last night gave Puccini’s masterpiece.<br />
Indeed although the curtain was rung up again at the conclusion<br />
of more than one act, the audience remained almost cruelly<br />
impassive, and one knew not whether to interpret their deep<br />
silence as an indication of emotions that were far too joyous and<br />
too deep for utterance, or of disappointment such as paralyses all<br />
one’s energies. The fact is that Puccini’s work is not as clever as<br />
it has been said to be... Miss Cecile Lorraine, a promising young<br />
artist, with a very sweet and pleasant voice, made her debut<br />
last night in the character of Mimi. She sang and acted ably:<br />
but we could have wished to hear her in a part that gave more<br />
opportunity for the display of her fine voice...<br />
34<br />
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Photo by Leon Farrell<br />
38
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