Conductor
Fergus Sheil
Rigoletto, The Flying DutchmanBiography
Fergus is the founding artistic director of Irish National Opera. He has conducted a wide-ranging repertoire of over 50 different operas live, for recordings, and on film. Highlights include Richard Strauss’s Salome, Der Rosenkavalier and Elektra, Rossini’s William Tell and La Cenerentola, Verdi’s Aida and Rigoletto, Brian Irvine and Netia Jones’s Least Like The Other, half of 20 Shots of Opera, and Beethoven’s Fidelio (Irish National Opera). He has also conducted Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, John Adams’s Nixon in China, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (Wide Open Opera), Mozart’s Don Giovanni and the first modern performance and recording of Robert O’Dwyer’s Irish-language opera, Eithne (Opera Theatre Company). Abroad he has conducted Least Like The Other in the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House, London, and William Tell for Nouvel Opéra Fribourg, and has also conducted for Scottish Opera and Welsh National Opera. At home he has also conducted the National Symphony Orchestra, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra, and the Irish Chamber Orchestra. With the State Choir Latvija he gave the world premiere of Arvo Pärt’s The Deer’s Cry and has also conducted the BBC Singers. He has fulfilled engagements in the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, the UK, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Malta and Estonia. Before founding INO he led both Wide Open Opera and Opera Theatre Company. Since 2011 he has been responsible for the production of over seventy different operas, which have been seen around Ireland and in London, Edinburgh, New York, Amsterdam and Luxembourg.
February 2025