Late developer Amy has key role in ‘Hansel and Gretel’

Amy Ní Fhearraigh was studying for a degree in architecture at Griffith College when the young Dubliner became friends with the god-daughter of a well-known Irish soprano.

Amy told her new friend how much she loved singing opera – even though at the time, she had almost no experience of performing.

“At that stage I was a shower singer,” she says with a laugh. However, her friend arranged a meeting with the soprano, who’s renowned in opera circles.

Amy doesn’t name the woman as she’s not sure if it’d be appropriate, but the singer’s advice was that the architecture student should follow her dream.

“I think she saw I had potential; she saw what I could become if was passionate enough to pursue it,” explains Amy. “I was rough around the edges,” she adds wryly.

Even if Amy’s edges were rough back then, that’s no longer the case for this young soprano who will be performing as Gretel in a new production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel at the city’s Town Hall Theatre on Tuesday, March 3. It’s a collaboration between the renowned Theatre Lovett (which produces theatre shows for all ages), Irish National Opera and the Abbey Theatre.   Instead of architecture, Amy studied music DIT Conservatory of Music, graduating with first class honours. In 2018 she was singled out by the highly regarded Golden Plectrum Music Magazine as a name to watch for.

Her first big breakthrough when she performed the principal role of Susanna in the Conservatory’s production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in 2016. A few weeks later she won the Dramatic Cup at the Feis Ceoil and a few months after that, she was singing Frasquita in the Lyric Opera production of Bizet’s Carmen. She’s also performed with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in a live broadcast on Lorcan Murray’s Classic Drive on Lyric FM. Amy has been a regular with Irish National Opera (INO), the company set up in 2017 by conductor Fergus Shiel, who previously headed up Opera Theatre Company and Wide Open Opera.  One of INO’s aims is to give everyone in Ireland a chance to experience the power of this art form. It’s doing that with its current co-production, Hansel and Gretel.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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