Owen Gilhooly - baritone
Irish baritone Owen Gilhooly trained with Jean Holmes in Limerick and Conor Farren in Dublin. He subsequently attended the Royal College of Music, London, where he held the Peter Pears Exhibition. He now studies with Iris dell’Acqua. A winner of the Madeline Finden Memorial Trust and the Great Elm Vocal Awards, he continued his studies at the National Opera Studio supported by the Belfast Classical Music Bursary, the Irish Arts Council, the RVW Trust the Sibyl Tutton Trust and Chris Ball. In 2007 he represented Ireland at BBC Cardiff Singer of the World.
Last year he made his Viennese debut singing the title role in Conti's Don Chisciotte in Serena Morena for Musikverkstatt Wien. Other opera performances include Figaro The Barber of Seville (Savoy Opera/Opera Theatre Company Dublin/Armonico Consort), Count The Marriage of Figaro (Lyric Opera Dublin/Iford Arts), Schaunard La bohème (Scottish Opera Go Round), Dr Falke Die Fledermaus and Harlequin Ariadne auf Naxos (English Touring Opera), Philoctetes in the world première of Edward Rushton’s Trojan Trilogy and Eckbert Blond Eckbert (The Opera Group), Corporal The Silver Tassie, Valentin Faust and Mandarin Turandot (Opera Ireland), Dandini La cenerentola, Mercury The Coronation of Poppea, Marcello La bohème, Dreamweaver Bug Off!!! Father Hansel and Gretel and Don Fernando Fidelio (OTC, Dublin), and Don Parmenione L’occasione fa il ladro, Elder Ott Susannah, Tooley The Mines of Sulphur and Bob The Old Maid and the Thief (Wexford Festival Opera).
With the BBC Symphony Orchestra he has sung Joseph and Polydorus in Berlioz l'Enfance du Christ conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, La Poigne/Waiter Margot la Rouge and The Bridegroom in Judith Weirs The Vanishing Bridegroom, and for the BBC Proms Bill Bobstay HMS Pinafore and Janacek’s Osud.
Other concerts include the Fauré Requiem for the Royal Ballet, Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with the London Philharmonic Orchestra Carmina Burana with the LPO, Bournemouth Symphony and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestras, and Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. He performs regularly in Ireland with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Irish Chamber, Ulster and Irish Baroque Orchestras and he has sung Anthony Powers’ From Station Island at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival. His recordings include Joyce Songs — James Joyce’s Musical Dublin with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Frederick May’s Songs from Prison with the RTÉ NSO.
In 2009/10 he has sung King Louis XV1 The Ghosts of Versailles at Wexford, Malatesta Don Pasquale (English Touring Opera), Rossini’s Figaro (Stanley Hall), Marcello at the Verbier Academy in Switzerland, Messiah with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Hindemith’s When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom’d with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, and concerts for Raymond Gubbay at Symphony Hall, Birmingham and the Barbican.