Irish National Opera Orchestra & Elaine Kelly
Biographie Irish National Opera Orchestra & Elaine Kelly
Elaine Kelly
“Irish conductor Elaine Kelly is a discovery, tracing the musical lines with exactitude.”
(Los Angeles Times, 2023)
Elaine Kelly was Resident Conductor and Chorus Director of Irish National Opera until May 2024. She has conducted works by Donnacha Dennehy, David Cooney, Amanda Feery, Evangelia Rigaki and last year conducted the operatic world premiere by Emma O’Halloran in the PROTOTYPE Festival New York (January) and LA Opera (April). She conducted nine new works in INO’s internationally praised 20 Shots of Opera in 2020 and a nationwide tour of Maxwell Davies's The Lighthouse in 2021.
Most recently, she conducted Gounod's Faust and Mozart's Così fan tutte with INO and Richard Taylors' Dawn to Dusk: The Moon is Listening with Garsington Opera, UK. In November 2023, she conducted the world premiere of Benedict Sheehan's Akathist in Trinity Church Wall Street, NY, recorded for album release this year.
She has worked on Rossini's Cenerentola, Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Puccini's La bohème, Strauss's Elektra, Gerald Barry's Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, Beethoven's Fidelio, Bizet's Carmen, Donizetti's L’elisir d’amore and Maria Stuarda, as well as Rossini's William Tell, Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and Salome. She has worked as assistant conductor with Opera National de Bordeaux and Nouvel Opéra Fribourg.
Kelly will conduct Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia with Longborough Festival Opera in 2025.
She has guest appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Cork Concert Orchestra, Cork Opera House Concert Orchestra, conducted the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg and was Music Director of the Dublin Symphony Orchestra and the University of Limerick Orchestra.
In 2014, Kelly won 1st prize in the inaugural ESB Feis Ceoil Orchestral Conducting Competition.
Oisín Ó Dálaigh
is a tenor based in Dublin. He was awarded a first-class honours BMus degree from TU Dublin Conservatoire, where he studied with Stephen Wallace and Aoife O’Sullivan. Oisín first began singing operatic roles and choruses while studying and in 2015 was asked to sing Goro in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with Bowden Opera Festival, Manchester. North Dublin Opera further nourished Oisín’s love for role singing, and with them he sang the Spirit and the Sailor in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Monostatos in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and debuted the Prince in the Irish premiere of Viardot’s Cendrillion. Oisín continued to sing roles with Opera in the Open, such as Monsieur Volseng in Mozart’s The Impresario, Alberto in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Tom Rakewell in Stravinsky’s The Rakes Progress.
Chorus engagements had Oisín singing with Norfolk Opera Festival, Wide Open Opera, Opera Theatre Company, Lismore Opera Festival/Blackwater Valley Opera Festival, Northern Ireland Opera, and Irish National Opera, where he is now a member of the company chorus, having previously featured in their Young Artist Showcase in 2018.
Oisín now studies with Italian tenor Giancarlo Mari, while having attended tuition with renowned teachers Christopher Sokolowski and James Dixon Schmidt. He looks forward to undertaking more roles in the future as well as enjoying chorus engagements, oratorio and recital performances and chamber repertoire.
John Molloy
studied at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and the National Opera Studio in London. Roles for Irish National Opera include Older Man in the European premiere of Emma O'Halloran and Mark O’Halloran's Trade which will be performed as part of Dublin Theatre Festival and on tour in October, Arthur in Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse, Colline in Puccini’s La bohème, Angelotti in Puccini’s Tosca, and Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte Antonio in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Roles for Opera Theatre Company include Sparafucile in Verdi’s Rigoletto, Trinity Moses in Weill’s Mahagonny, the title role in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and Zuniga in Bizet’s Carmen.
Other roles include Alidoro in Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Scottish Opera), Guccio in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi (Royal Opera House, London), Masetto in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (English National Opera), Arthur in Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse and the title role in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Nationale Reisopera, Netherlands), Le Commandeur in Thomas’s La cour de Célimène (Wexford Festival Opera), Angelotti in Puccini’s Tosca, Luka in Walton’s The Bear, Banco in Verdi’s Macbeth and Dulcamara in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore (OTC and NI Opera), Raimondo in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (Opera Holland Park), Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Sarastro in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Bonze in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (Lyric Opera Productions), Snug in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Opera Ireland) and Henry Kissinger in John Adams’s Nixon in China (Wide Open Opera).
Naomi Louisa O’Connell
Hailed by The New York Times as “radiant,” Naomi Louisa O’Connell made her professional debut in 2012 starring on the West End in Terrence McNally’s play Master Class. Her work encompasses a broad spectrum of theatrical and operatic repertoire, ranging from plays to operas, from recitals and cabarets to sound sculptures and virtual reality performance art.
Sought after for her interpretations of contemporary opera, she created the role of Mrs Van Buren in Intimate Apparel (Gordon/Nottage) at Lincoln Center Theater, to be released on PBS Great Performances this fall. Notable operatic roles include the title role in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (Oper Frankfurt), Cherubino in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (Welsh National Opera, Atlanta Opera), Offenbach’s La Périchole (Garsington Opera), and Mélisande in Pelléas et Mélisande — both Maeterlinck’s play and Debussy’s opera — with the Cincinnati Symphony. At Princeton’s McCarter Theatre, she performed the role of Rosine in Stephen Wadsworth’s translations of the Beaumarchais Figaro plays.
World premieres of contemporary operas include Figaro Gets A Divorce (Langer/Pountney), The Flood (Fujiwara/Wadsworth), The Wait (O’Halloran), TOUCH (Power/Ione), and The Selfish Giant (Assad/Palmer). Her bravura performance in Least Like the Other: Searching for Rosemary Kennedy (Irvine/Jones) with Irish National Opera was hailed as “a tour de force” (Sunday Independent) and “a cut above the extraordinary.” (Arts Review) Most recently, she recorded Ireland’s first virtual reality opera As an nGnách (Merivale/O’Neill) which will tour the country’s music festivals in 2023.
Lauded by The New York Times as “a natural in the recital format” for her Carnegie Hall debut recital Witches, Bitches & Women in Britches at Weill Recital Hall, she performs regularly in concerts internationally, and her recitals have been featured on WQXR and the Met Live Arts Series. A keen performer of chamber music, her nuanced performance of Ravel’s Mallarmé songs at the Marlboro Music Festival was applauded by the Boston Globe as “outstanding.”
A graduate of The Juilliard School and the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Naomi was brought up in the west of Ireland. Works in development include a theatrical song cycle (for which she is also the librettist) with composer Emma O’Halloran under the auspices of Ireland’s Music Network. Upcoming performances include engagements with LA Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, New York’s Prototype Festival, Hong Kong’s ‘Intimate of Creativity’ Festival, and the Dublin Theatre Festival.
