The distinguished international mezzo-soprano Bernadette Greevy will lead a concert featuring a number of young professional singers from her Irish Museum of Modern Art Masterclasses at the Museum on Sunday 16 October at 3.00pm. The four singers, Margaret Collins and Suzanne Dunne, sopranos, Edel O’Brien, mezzo-soprano, and Jamie Rock, baritone, will join Dr Greevy in An Exaltation of Larks, an afternoon of enchanting music from Strauss to Brahms and Mozart to Gilbert & Sullivan. The accompanist for the concert is the leading Irish pianist Deborah Kelleher.
The programme features a number of well-loved works from such famous arias as No più andrai and Porgi, Amor from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro to the sublime lieder of Brahams, Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf. These are followed after the interval by two of Gilbert & Sullivan’s most popular operettas The Pirates of Penzance and The Yeoman of the Guard.
The Exaltation of Larks concerts, now in their ninth year, are designed to carry forward the work of Bernadette Greevy’s Masterclasses, held at the Museum in January each year, by providing the participants with an opportunity to work in the public arena with one of this country’s most respected and successful artists.
Dr Bernadette Greevy is internationally recognised as one of the finest mezzo-sopranos singing today. At the beginning of her illustrious career, a USA recital given by her provoked the remark by the music critic of the Washington Post that she would undoubtedly become ‘one of the noble and beloved artists of our time’. Born in Dublin, she has performed on all five continents with considerable success. Renowned as a Mahler interpreter all over the world, she has also sung in a wide variety of operatic roles including Carmen, Eboli, Orfeo, Herodiade, Azucena, Delilah and Ariodante. Bernadette holds Honorary Doctorates of Music from the National University of Ireland and Trinity College, Dublin. In addition, the honour of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice was conferred on her by the Holy See. She was the first Artist-in-Residence of the Dublin Institute of Technology and Faculty of Applied Arts, and is also Founder/Artistic Director of the Anna Livia International Opera Festival.
Margaret Collins received her performance diploma from the Royal College of Music, London, and achieved great success in the Feis Ceoil winning the Geoghegan Cup, the Gervase Elwes Trophy and the Raymond Kearns Bursary. She is a regular performer in the Exaltation of Larks concerts in IMMA and her operatic roles include the Firebird in L’Enfant et les Sortilèges by Ravel and Yvette in Puccini’s La Rondine in the inaugural season of the Anna Livia International Opera Festival. She achieved great success in all the Anna Livia Fringe Festivals to date, performing the principal female roles in Mozart’s Bastien et Bastienne, Barber’s A Hand of Bridge, Menotti’s The Telephone and Wolf-Farrari’s Susanna’s Secret. She has also taken part in the Anna Livia Carol Concerts in Farmleigh House.
Suzanne Dunne studied singing in the DIT College of Music and later joined the Cór na nÓg Youth Choir, the Philharmonic Choir and Lumina Chamber Choir, as well as touring nationwide with Liam Lawton’s Legend to Light tour. She was also one of the leading sopranos in the Bunratty singers. She has sung in many oratorio concerts in Dublin, Cork and Kildare and has appeared with the Drawing Room Opera Company. Following her participation in Bernadette Greevy’s Masterclasses at IMMA, she was a principal chorister in the Anna Livia International Opera Festival’s productions of Verdi’s Il Trovatore and Flotow’s Martha. She is also a regular participant in An Exaltation of Larks and has performed in an Anna Livia Carol Concert in Farmleigh House.
Edel O’Brien has an Honours Masters degree in music from Maynooth and a Distinction Postgraduate Diploma and Gold Medal from Trinity College of Music, London. In 2001 she sang with great success, two principal roles in Il Tabarro and Gianni Schicchi from Puccini’s Il Trittico at the Anna Livia International Opera Festival. In 2002 she was one of seven singers to be invited to study on the Young Artists Programme for Opera National de Paris, Opera Bastille, and while there, she won the Prix Lyrique awarded annually to one male and one female singer. Edel has appeared in oratorio and recital in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Farmleigh House, St. Martin in the Fields London, St. Alban’s Cathedral, the Sorbonne, Le Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, L’Hotel de Velle, Versailles and Opera de Rouen on tour around France.
Jamie Rock studies singing at the RIAM and also with Jorge Chamine in Paris. He has taken part in several Masterclasses including Bernadette Greevy’s IMMA series. At the Feis Ceoil he has won many prizes including the baritone solo, the McCormick Cup & the O’Mara Cup. Jamie’s solo roles to date include Ein Deutches Requiem by Brahms, Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas, Acis and Galetea by Handel and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solenelle with Bray Choral Society in Germany. This is his second appearance in the IMMA Exaltation of Larks Concerts. In 2004 he won RTE Lyric FM’s Divas and Divos competition and appeared is Lyric’s Christmas Concert in Limerick. He has given recitals in Sligo, Wexford and Carlow and future engagements include recitals in Ballymaloe House and Tuscany in Italy.
Deborah Kelleher studied piano with Frank Heneghan and harpsichord with Aisling Heneghan at the DIT Conservatory of Music & Drama. She obtained her B.A. Mod. from Trinity College, Dublin and M.A. (Musicology) from University College, Dublin. She was awarded a teaching fellowship in that institution in 2001 and has undertaken a PhD in Queens University, Belfast, on the subject of twentieth-century Art Song in Ireland. She is much in demand as one of Ireland’s leading accompanists and has given solo and chamber recitals and broadcasts in Ireland, England, Belgium, Austria and America. She has appeared in concert with Bernadette Greevy, Geraldine O’Grady, Cora Venus Lunny and Ailish Tynan. She has accompanied all events in the Anna Livia Fringe Festival with great personal success.
Tickets for the concert are €15.00; concessions €10.00. Booking, including credit cards, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Parking at the Museum is free of charge, tel: 01-612 9900, email: [email protected]. Tickets will also be available at the door.
For further information please contact Patrice Molloy at Tel: +353 1 612 9900, Fax: +353 1 612 9999, Email: [email protected]
16 September 2005