+353 1 679 4962
email: dermot@opera.ie
While Opera Theatre Company’s outreach work brings world-class opera into the local community by nurturing future opera audiences, our Young Associate Artists’ Programme works in the other direction: it promotes local talent by fostering the career development of young Irish/Northern Irish opera singers right up to the highest international standards.
Designed to bridge the gap between third-level education and the highly competitive professional opera scene, the Programme offers individually tailored top-level coaching in singing, language and stagecraft, together with appropriate performance experience and exposure to international opera.
Opera Theatre Company’s Young Associate Artists are selected on the basis of their talent and immediate potential for further development. Whether about to complete or having just completed their formal studies, they will be at a stage in their development when they are able to gain maximum benefit from the Programme. They are treated as young professionals in their own right and have an ambassadorial role as representatives of Opera Theatre Company’s artistic ethos. The YAAP offers:
Individual vocal coaching is at the heart of the Programme and is arranged by the Programme Director in consultation with an advisory board that includes vocal consultants and leading opera professionals working in major opera institutions around Europe. Coaching, delivered on a monthly basis, is tailored to the individual artist and, in most cases, geared towards the learning of a role for an engagement or preparation for important auditions.
Master Classes presented in partnership with the Royal Irish Academy of Music with artists such as Ann Murray, Thomas Allen, Patricia Bardon and Marie McLaughlin.
All Young Associate Artists participate in drama courses at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin’s Temple Bar. The ten-week course takes place one evening a week and offers participants a practical opportunity to explore the craft of acting. The YAA are asked to keep a diary of what takes place each week and prepare a monologue for the final session.
The YAA also spend an intensive week working with Annilese Miskimmon and an approved choreographer/movement specialist. As well as coaching the YAA in the dramatic presentation of their audition/recital arias, Miskimmon also stages a short scene from an opera, advises the YAA on deportment and discusses approaches to directing.
All YAA will be aided with the development of their language skills and OTC has worked successfully with the relevant language bodies in Ireland to set up courses in the past in Italian, French, German and Russian.
Many of our partners in the corporate sphere present seminars on basic business skills which will help serve the YAA during their time on the Programme and beyond. Seminars include:
The YAA play a major role in Opera Theatre Company’s education and outreach work, shadowing more experienced professionals and bringing original input to the Introduction to Opera workshops, which Opera Theatre Company runs alongside touring productions or as freestanding projects.
As the Programme has developed the YAA are in great demand for corporate events. From time to time they are also hired to deliver tailor-made recital programmes for corporate partners. Whenever appropriate, the YAA are involved in main stage touring productions through performing smaller roles or understudying larger roles.
The Programme provides the opportunity of attending rehearsals and performances at a number of major European opera houses (Royal Opera, Covent Garden, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Netherlands Opera). The YAA also receive coaching from the music staff and other guest performers in these institutions.
The Programme covers expenses for all coaching, including fees, venue rental, travel and accommodation for YAA and tutors, tickets to performances, and offers a flat fee for taking part in education projects and recitals.
Initial funding for the Programme has come from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s National Lottery Fund. Opera Theatre Company also gratefully acknowledges additional support from The Arts Council of Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and is now seeking additional funding from enlightened individuals or companies in order to expand the great potential of this unique project.
Back to topMuch sought after as a concert singer, she has sung with the Orchestre de Paris under Kubelik, the Philadelphia Orchestra under Sawallisch, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Muti, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Solti, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Haitink and in the Musikverein, Vienna under Sawallisch and Harnoncourt. She sings in Great Britain with the leading orchestras, at the BBC Promenade Concerts (where she has sung at both the First and Last Nights of the Proms) and at the major festivals.
Ann Murray's recital appearances have taken her to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Geneva, Dresden, Zurich, Frankfurt, Madrid, London, Dublin, the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Munich and Salzburg Festivals and both the Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna. Her discography reflects not only her broad concert and recital repertoire but also many of her great operatic roles, including Purcell's Dido under Harnoncourt, Dorabella under Levine, Cherubino under Muti, Hansel under Colin Davis, Sextus under Harnoncourt and Donna Elvira under Solti.
Her operatic engagements have taken her to Hamburg, Dresden, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Cologne, Zurich, Amsterdam, the Chicago Lyric Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, New York. At La Scala, Milan her roles have included Donna Elvira, Sextus, Dorabella and Cherubino under Muti. For the Bavarian State Opera, Munich she has sung Cherubino, Dorabella, Sextus, Elvira, the Composer, Octavian, Xerxes, Ariodante, Giulio Cesare and Rinaldo; at the Vienna State Opera Idamantes, Cherubino, Charlotte, Rosina, Octavian and the Composer; and at the Salzburg Festival Cecilio and Sextus under Cambreling, La Cenerentola under Chailly, Nicklausse and Cherubino under Levine, Dorabella and Donna Elvira under Muti and Octavian under Maazel.
In 1997 Ann Murray was made an Honorary Doctor of Music by the National University of Ireland, in 1998 she was made a Kammersängerin of the Bavarian State Opera and in 1999 an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. In the 2002 Golden Jubilee Queen’s Birthday Honours she was appointed an honorary Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. In 2004 she was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit.
For a rare opportunity to hear Ann sing in Ireland, come to Great Irish Voices on November 4th, 2011.
Contact: phillippa.cole@askonasholt.co.uk
She studied piano at the RIAM with Rhona Marshall and was the winner of the Briscoe Cup in 1978. She read music at Trinity College Dublin, graduating with First Class Honours. She continued her studies at Die Stattliche Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, where she studied with Paul Hamburger and Gordon Back, and the National Opera Studio London.
She has held full-time positions at Scottish Opera, Teatro Massimo di Palermo in Sicily, Opera North and the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam, where she spent sixteen years. In 1989 she began a long association with Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where she received the Janni Strasser repetiteur award. She was involved in the Mozart celebration year of 1991 in productions of “La Clemenza di Tito” with Philip Langridge and “Le Nozze di Figaro”. She has guested at English National Opera London, the Bastille in Paris, the Ruhr Triennale in Germany and with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. She appears on DVD recordings of Glyndebourne’s “Jenufa” and “Pique Dame”, where she performed the piano part.
Since 2003 Brenda has worked annually at the Salzburg Festival. She was Chief Coach and organist for the production of "Peter Grimes" with Simon Rattle in 2005 and in the "Mozart 250" year of 2006 she was Chief Coach for "Die Entführung" and "Zaide" with Ivor Bolton. She enjoys a special relationship with the young star conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin.
In 2007 she became a member of the music staff of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where she has assisted Valery Gergiev on productions of "War and Peace" , “The Nose” and “Boris Godunov” and Evelino Pido in "La Sonnambula", which included the singers Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez.
Brenda is very involved in working with young singers and coaches regularly for training programmes at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, The National Opera Studio, London, the Young Artists Training Programme Tokyo, the Cardiff International Academy of Voice and Opera Studio Nederland Amsterdam. In 2008 she was the principal coach on the the newly-formed Young Singers Project in the Salzburg Festival (YSP), collaborating with Michael Schade and Barbara Bonney. She continues her involvement with the YSP each summer. She has been Vocal Consultant for OTC’s Young Associate Artists Programme since its inception in 2004, during which time she has been a coach and mentor to many young Irish singers.
In 2011 Brenda returned to live in her native Dublin, joining the teaching staff of the Royal Irish Academy of Music and continuing her work with young Irish singers.
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