Mezzo-soprano

Naomi Louisa O’Connell

Trade / Mary Motorhead

Biography

Hailed by The New York Times as a “vivid, charismatic, daring singing actor,” Naomi made her professional debut starring on the West End in Terrence McNally’s play Master Class. Sought after for her interpretations of contemporary opera, her bravura performance in the world premiere of Brian Irvine and Netia Jones’s Least Like the Other, Searching for Rosemary Kennedy with Irish National Opera was hailed as “a tour de force” (Sunday Independent) and “a cut above the extraordinary.” (Arts Review)

Naomi’s performance work encompasses both theatrical and operatic repertoire, and she has collaborated on projects that vary from sound sculpture installations to cabarets to virtual reality performance art. Notable roles include Judith in Bartók’s Bluebeards Castle (Boston Lyric Opera) Poppea in Monteverdi’s L'incoronazione di Poppea (Oper Frankfurt) Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Welsh National Opera, Atlanta Opera) Offenbach’s La Périchole (Garsington Opera) and Mélisande in both Maeterlinck’s play and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (The Cincinnati Symphony).

World premieres include Elena Langer and David Pountney’s Figaro Gets A Divorce, Korine Fujiwara and Stephen Wadsworth’s The Flood, Emma O’Halloran’s The Wait, Karen Power and Ione’s TOUCH, Finola Merivale and Jody O’Neill’s As an nGnách, Clarice Assad and Lila Palmer’s The Selfish Giant and Ricky Ian Gordon and Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel featured on PBS Great Performances.

She premiered the virtuosic monodrama Emma O’Halloran and Mark O’Halloran’s Mary Motorhead at Prototype Festival, New York (Jan 2023), where her “startling, spectacularly animated performance” (Broadway World) was applauded by critics as “a great operatic impersonation of the ecstatic driving force of an inner being.” (LA Times) Praised by The New York Times as “a natural in the recital format” for her Carnegie Hall debut recital Witches, Bitches & Women in Britches, her recordings have featured on WQXR and the Met Live Arts Series.

July 2024