RUPTURE MUSIC & TEXT ÉNA BRENNAN Sometimes we are our RACHEL GOODE WOMAN own worst enemy... We SARAH RICHMOND CONSCIENCE fall victim to a conscience poisoned by society’s JO MANGAN DIRECTOR repressing landscape. SARAH BACON PRODUCTION DESIGNER A rupture occurs within KATIE DAVENPORT COSTUME DESIGNER ourselves – the timeless PAUL KEOGAN LIGHTING DESIGNER fight between good and evil. ELAINE KELLY CONDUCTOR RTÉ CONCERT ORCHESTRA COMMISSIONED BY JEAN & IAN FLITCROFT PRODUCTION TEAM Series Director Mastering Engineer Costume Maker Hugh O’Conor Christoph Stickel Denise Assas Cameras/Editor Production Manager Costume Assistant Hugh Chaloner Rob Usher Nicola Burke Caroline Butler Post-production Stage Managers Leandro Arouca/Element Lisa Krugel Wigs, Hair & Makeup Conleth Stanley Carole Dunne Graphic Design Paula Tierney Colin Derham Kate Watkins Wigs, Hair & Makeup Assistant Audio Production Technical Stage Manager Paula Melián Ergodos Adrian Leake Set Construction Audio Producers Chief Electrician Theatre Production Services Adrian Hart & Benedict Simon Burke Schlepper-Connolly Lighting Provider Lighting Programmer Cue One Assistant Audio Producer Eoin McNinch Catarina Schembri Transport Costume Supervisor Owen & Odran Sherwin Recording Engineer Monica Ennis & Mixing Engineer Eduardo Prado 02 RTÉ CONCERT ORCHESTRA violin viola double bass Bróna Cahill Lisanne Melchior Seamus Doyle Elizabeth Leonard Elizabeth O’Neill Hugh Murray percussion cello Stephen Kelly Yue Tang Sheelagh Harte FOR IRISH NATIONAL OPERA Studio & Outreach Producer Digital Communications Artistic Administrator James Bingham Manager Muireann Ní Dhubhghaill Sarah Halpin Marketing Manager Head of Production Sorcha Carroll Business & Finance Manager Gavin O’Sullivan Cate Kelliher Development Manager Artistic Director Aoife Daly Development & Marketing Fergus Sheil Executive Executive Director Claire Lowney Company Stage Manager Diego Fasciati Paula Tierney Project Administrator Patricia Malpas ADDITIONAL THANKS Programme edited by Michael Dervan 03 BIOGRAPHIES ÉNA BRENNAN RACHEL GOODE COMPOSER, WRITER SOPRANO Éna Brennan is a composer, Galway soprano Rachel Goode arranger, violinist and graphic graduated in 2014 with a first- designer, originally from Brussels, class honours BMus degree from Belgium. Since moving to Dublin the DIT Conservatory of Music she has obtained a BA in Music and and Drama in Dublin, where she Drama and an MPhil in Composition studied under Colette McGahon- from Trinity College Dublin, and collaborated with Tosh, and was also awarded the Michael McNamara a vast array of artists, weaving in between many of gold medal for highest recital mark. She most the layers of the Irish music scene. Over the years recently graduated in July 2018 from the Masters she has had works performed by Dulciana Vocal in Opera Performance course at the Royal Welsh Ensemble, Tonnta Vocal Ensemble, New Dublin College of Music and Drama (RWCMD) where she Voices, Mornington Singers, Robinson Panoramic studied under Suzanne Murphy. In May 2019 she Quartet and Co-Orch. She has lent her violin to won the Milford Haven Young Opera Singer of the various theatre works including White Label’s The Year award, and in June 2019 she won the Ian Eurydice Project and Rough Magic’s Way To Heaven. Stoutzker prize for most outstanding musician at Éna’s main musical outlet is her experimental solo RWCMD. In November 2017 she sang the role of project Dowry, with her violin and electronics at its Lauretta in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi at the RWCMD core. She also manages Dowry Strings, a vehicle Winter Opera Gala with the Welsh National Opera for collaboration – notable collaborators include Orchestra under Carlo Rizzi. She performed the roles Bell X1 and Christian Löffler. Éna has arranged of Fortune and Juno in Monteverdi’s The Return of strings for many musicians and has performed Ulysses with Opera Collective Ireland and made her with them on stages all across Ireland and abroad, INO debut as the High Priestess in Verdi’s Aida. Her including Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, London’s other operatic roles include Mother in Menotti’s Union Chapel and the National Opera House, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Iris in Handel’s Semele, Wexford. She arranged all of the strings for the 2018 Clorinda in Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Anna Maurrant edition of Imagining Ireland in the National Concert in Weill’s Street Scene and Pamina in Mozart’s The Hall and has worked in studio with many bands Magic Flute. She has received support from the including Tandem Felix, Paddy Hanna, Participant, Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon, Galway County The Line and Sive. Council, Black Mountain Barns, Worshipful Company of the Girdlers and David and Alasdair MacWilliam Scholarship. She is a current member of Irish National Opera’s ABL Aviation Opera Studio. 04 SARAH RICHMOND ELAINE KELLY MEZZO-SOPRANO CONDUCTOR Mezzo-soprano Sarah Richmond Elaine Kelly joined Irish National is known for her vocal warmth and Opera’s ABL Aviation Opera Studio versatility, with Barbara Bonney as a conductor in 2019. During remarking on her “absolutely her first year, she was assistant spectacular musicality”. Sarah was conductor and chorus master an ENO Opera Works Artist and on a productions of Rossini’s trained on the National Opera Studio Short Course. La Cenerentola and, as part of the studio, she She graduated from the Royal Northern College of also conducted the premiere of Amanda Feery’s Music with distinction, as a Drapers’ de Turckheim As Above, So Below, with mezzo-soprano Bríd Ní Scholar. Her roles range from Dido in Purcell’s Ghruagáin and Bangers and Crash Percussion Dido and Aeneas to Dritte Dame in Mozart’s Die Group at the 2020 First Fortnight Festival. In 2014, Zauberflöte, Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, she won the inaugural ESB Feis Ceoil Orchestral Peep Bo in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado and Willie Conducting Competition which led to engagements in Mascagni’s Guglielmo Ratcliff to Gwendolen in with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. She has also Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest. worked with the Dublin Symphony Orchestra (of Recital appearances include Oxford Lieder Festival, which she was Musical Director from 2017-19), UK Strauss Society, Chester Music Festival, and Cork Concert Orchestra, CSM Symphony Orchestra, Dublin Song Series with Finghin Collins and the Cork Fleischmann Orchestra and the Fleischmann RTÉ Contempo Quartet. She has performed core Choir. In 2015, she was the assistant conductor for concert repertoire throughout the UK and Ireland, Opera Collective Ireland’s production of Handel’s and prominent conductors of solo engagements Agrippina with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, in include Vasily Petrenko, Gergely Madaras and Mark association with Northern Ireland Opera. She is Elder. International credits include Monte Carlo and currently the conductor of the University of Limerick Soriano nel Cimino. She has performed regularly on Orchestra and Musical Director to the award-winning BBC Radio Ulster and has broadcast on RTÉ, BBC Cork-based choir, Cantate. Elaine is a BMus & MA Radio 3 and worldwide as a soloist for the IRFU. graduate of the CIT Cork School of Music where A keen advocate of contemporary music, she has she studied conducting with Alan Cutts and violin premiered works by Andrew Synnott (creating the with Colette O’Brien and Adrian Petcu, and she title role in his What Happened to Lucrece at Wexford has also participated in masterclasses with many Festival Opera), Éna Brennan, Donald Judge and distinguished conductors. Sarah Murphy. Notable successes include Janet Baker bestowing on her The Joyce and Michael Kennedy Award for the Singing of Strauss and winning The Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland’s The Soloist. 05 BIOGRAPHIES JO MANGAN SARAH BACON DIRECTOR PRODUCTION DESIGNER Jo is Artistic Director/CEO of The Sarah trained at the Motley Theatre Performance Corporation, and Design Course in London, having Director of Carlow Arts Festival. Her previously studied architecture at work has won plaudits and awards University College Dublin. In 2009 internationally and nationally she was a Linbury Prize finalist at including a number of Irish Times the National Theatre, London. She Irish Theatre Awards. Current work includes directing designs for theatre, opera, dance and film. Recent a new work for the Abbey as part of their 14 Voices theatre designs (set and costume) include Beginning/ from the Bloody Field. Upcoming directing work The Children, ASSASSINS (the Gate Theatre), City in the virtual reality field includes Traction, a VR/ Song, Anna Karenina, The Shadow of a Gunman Community/Opera work for Irish National Opera over (winner of the 2016 Irish Times Irish Theatre Award three years. For The Performance Corporation she is for best set design, and also nominated for best working on a live performance/VR project for Dublin costume design; Abbey Theatre), Tina’s Idea of Fun Theatre Festival and EXPO 2021 in Dubai. Recent (Peacock Theatre), Melt, The Effect, Everything work includes directing Bingo Wings – a theatre/ Between Us (Rough Magic), The Water Orchard aerial dance show for Fidget Feet – as well as Curator (Collapsing Horse) and costume designs for The for the Prague Quadrennial Design Exhibition through Rehearsal, Playing The Dane and The Patient Gloria the creation of a VR film which also was exhibited (Pan Pan Theatre). Designs for opera include Cilea’s at the Dublin Theatre Festival and Belfast Festival. L’Arlesiana (Wexford Festival Opera and Teatro Other recent