Dáirine Ní Mheadhra
Cellist, Conductor, Co-Artistic Director of Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, Dáirine Ní Mheadhra is one of the nine contemporary artists who have shared their first impressions of Toronto with us for First Impressions: Telling Toronto Stories. This is a joint project of Toronto Arts Council and Heritage Toronto appearing as a series of posters on the TTC throughout 2009 and 2010, through the support of RBC.
“The Queen of Puddings Music Theatre Company has astonished and thrilled the Toronto opera-going public. I can’t recall attending such a gripping premiere in many years of opera-going.”
Opera UK
“The production was dazzling, its verbal, visual and musical wit unfailingly exuberant and its stunning cast fully in command of the vocal pyrotechnics Sokolovic demands.”
Opera News, New York
“Nothing I’ve reviewed this year has given me such hope for the future of contemporary music theatre –and for humanity itself.”
The National Post
A native Gaelic speaker, Dáirine Ní Mheadhra began her professional career at the age of seventeen as a cellist with the Irish National Symphony Orchestra. In subsequent years Dáirine developed an interest in both conducting and contemporary music. In 1990 she founded the new music ensemble Nua Nós. This ensemble comprised the principal chairs of the Irish National Symphony Orchestra and rapidly established itself as the leading exponent of contemporary music in Ireland. Nua Nós was awarded an AIB Better Ireland Arts Award in 1995, and in the same year Dáirine immigrated to Canada to join her new Canadian husband John Hess. They founded Queen of Puddings Music Theatre and under her inspired direction as resident Artistic Director, Queen of Puddings has emerged as a bold and provocative leader of contemporary opera in Canada.
Spectacular Queen of Puddings successes include Beatrice Chancy (1999), the first opera about Canadian slavery (music James Rolfe, libretto George Elliott Clarke) which launched the career of Canadian superstar singer Measha Brueggergosman. The Midnight Court (2005) based on the famous Gaelic poem of the same name (music Ana Sokolovic, libretto adaptation Paul Bentley) premiered in Toronto and was chosen by Toronto’s critics as one of the Top 10 shows of 2005 in all genres by The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and Eye Weekly. Queen of Puddings made its international debut in 2006 when it toured The Midnight Court to the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London, the first Canadian company to perform at this prestigious venue. Love Songs (music Ana Sokolovic, selected love poems) premiered in March 2008, toured to Montreal, Ljubljana, Zagreb and Paris in April 2009, and was chosen as the best production of the International Zagreb Music Biennale. In February 2009, the company presented the world premiere in Toronto of Inês, a new chamber opera inspired by Portuguese Fado music (music James Rolfe, libretto Paul Bentley) which tours to Portugal in 2011. Other creations in development include Svadba (music Ana Sokolovic, text Antoine Laprise), a tour-de-force for six female singers using Balkan folkloric music as an inspiration, and Beauty Dissolves in a Brief Hour (music Fuhong Shi, John Rea, Pierre Klanac, selected poems) a Chinese, English and French language triptych for two female voices and accordion.
Listen to Inês, chamber opera inspired by Portuguese Fado music
