Mezzo-soprano

Bríd Ní Ghruagáin

Biography

Bríd has been a member of the ABL Aviation Opera Studio with Irish National Opera since September 2019. She is an alumnus of English National Opera’s Opera Works programme 2016-17, and studies with countertenor Stephen Wallace and dramatic soprano Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet. She graduated from the TU Conservatory of Music and Drama with a Masters in Music (Performance) in 2013. Bríd is also a graduate of UCD in Archaeology and Irish Folklore, and the holder of the de Valera prize for her First Class Honours Masters in Landscape Archaeology. As part of the ABL Aviation Studio, Bríd premièred Amanda Feery's new concert aria for mezzo and percussion quartet As Above, So Below in the programme How Aria for the First Fortnight festival as well as covering both Witch & Mother in INO's touring production of Hansel & Gretel, getting the chance to jump in for a performance.

She made her role début with Irish National Opera as Mother in Madama Butterfly. Bríd previously made her UK opera début in 2016 when she created the role of Leah in Neil Martin and Glenn Patterson’s site-specific opera Long Story Short: the Belfast Opera (NI Opera/Belfast Buildings Trust) and her Irish début with Opera Collective Ireland as Ericlea in Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses with Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. In 2017 Bríd championed new works by Irish composers — singing the world première of Elis Czerniak, Sinéad Finegan and Norah Walsh’s Beneath Iseult’s Tower for Opera Theatre Company's Opera Hub and Contemporary Music Centre; and Robbie Blake, Anna Murray, David Coonan and Teodor Iuliu Radu’s The 24hr Opera, also for OTC Opera Hub. In the same season, Bríd sang the first performance of Neil Martin’s song cycle, Songs After Rain, which was commissioned by the Prince of Wales, for a royal audience at Hillsborough Castle. Other roles include Baba the Turk in Stravinsky's The Rakes' Progress, Mistress Quickly in Verdi’s Falstaff; Zita in Gianni Schicchi and La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica (both Puccini); Mrs Grose in The Turn of the Screw and Mrs Noye in Noye’s Fludde (both Britten); Zweite Dame in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte; and Witch/Mother in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. Bríd is an accomplished oratorio soloist, and has sung the title role in Handel's Solomon, as well as performing Messiah and Dixit Dominus, Bach's Matthäus-Passion and the complete Mozart masses.

Bríd also works as a producer/director/writer in television and radio, and was one of the lead artists involved with Tionscadal na nAmhrán Ealaíne Gaeilge, which commissioned 50 new art songs in Irish from domestic and international composers, funded by An Chomhairle Ealaíon/The Arts Council. She is a dialect coach for opera and theatre and worked on the first modern concert performance and recording of Robert O’Dwyer’s Eithne for OTC. She is currently chair of the Irish language literary festival IMRAM.