Maire O’Brien
From Dublin, Ireland, soprano Máire O’Brien came to the U.S to study at the Juilliard School, and her talents have found a home in both contemporary and standard repertoire on the operatic, oratorio and concert stage. In her New York City Opera debut, the New York Times hailed her performance of Miss Jessel in Britten’s Turn of the Screw as “vivid and well sung”. Her powerful performance as the Duchess in Powder Her Face, by acclaimed British composer, Thomas Adès, was heard in 2008 at the White Nights Festival in St Petersburg, Russia, having performed the role at the inaugural New Horizons Festival at the Mariinsky Theater, St Petersburg in 2007. She first sang this role in its stage premiere conducted by the composer at the Aspen Music Festival, and again at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival with the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra under Robert Spano.
Her operatic career has taken her to Spain, Italy, Mexico, the United States, and Ireland, in such roles as Violetta (Verdi’s La Traviata), the Marchesa (Verdi’s Un giorno di regno), Adalgisa (Norma), Desdemona (Rossini’s Otello), Alice Ford (Falstaff – with Julius Rudel), First Lady (Die Zauberflöte), and Hanna (The Merry Widow).
She has just performed at the 2011 Grant Park Music Festival in Mendelssohn’s Symphony Nr 2, “Lobesgesang”., and her performance at the inaugural Make Music Chicago Festival on June 21st was broadcast live on WFMT. An experienced concert artist, she was the soprano soloist in Messiah with the Apollo Chorus at Chicago’s Symphony Hall and at the Harris Theater. Also in Chicago, she sang the soprano solo in Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras Nr 5 in “A CELLO CELEBRATION ENCORE: Cellists of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera, and Friends” at the Rush Hour Concert Series at St James, and returned to the 2010 season to sing the Seven Popular Spanish Songs of Manuel de Falla in an arrangement for four cellos and soprano. Her voice “was fresh and sweet in the soprano arias, and she had both the stratospheric high notes and the raw courage to take on the solo “ Dulcissime,!” stated the Washington Post about Ms O’Brien’s performance in Orff’s Carmina Burana at the Kennedy Center with the Washington Chorus.
She also was the soprano soloist with the Washington Chorus in Mozart’s Requiem, and A Sea Symphony by Vaughan Williams. She has sung with the American Composer’s Orchestra in Whitman & Song, and with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland in Mendelssohn’s Symphony Nr 2 and Nielsen’s Symphony Nr 3. Other repertoire includes Stabat Mater (Dvorak), Mozart’s Mass in c minor, Beethoven’s Symphony Nr 9, Ravel’s Shéhérazade, Mozart’s Ch’io mi scordi di te, and Barber’s Knoxville, Summer of 1915.
Her recital appearances in Ireland and the USA include performances at the Classical Monday Concerts at the Chicago Cultural Center, the Sounds Of Our City series at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago, Meet the Virtuoso Series at the 92nd St Y, at the Tenri Cultural Institute in New York, and at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall.
On recording, Ms O’Brien is to be heard in Handel’s Deidamia (Nerea), James Adler’s Memento Mori: An Aids Requiem, and Nielsen’s Symphony Nr 3 on the Naxos Label.
She has been a New York regional finalist at the Metropolitan Opera Council auditions and received a career grant from the Gerda Lissner Foundation. Ms O’Brien is the only two-time winner of the E. Nakamichi Concerto Competition at the Aspen Music Festival. Other awards include prizes at the Premio SanRemo Musica Classic and Iris Adami Corradetti International Voice Competition (Italy) and the New Jersey State Opera Competition.
Ms O’Brien holds a Bachelors Degree from Trinity College, Dublin and a Masters of Music from the Juilliard School, and trained at the Juilliard Young Artist program.