Irish mezzo-soprano Naomi O'Connell to perform at Purdue
February 15, 2012
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"Witches, Bitches & Women in Britches" |
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. –Irish mezzo-soprano, Naomi O'Connell will perform at Purdue University's Loeb Playhouse at 7:30 p.m. on March 7. She will be accompanied by pianist Brent Funderburk in a program titled "Witches, Bitches & Women in Britches."
With a voice hailed by The New York Times as "radiant" and "expressively rendered," Irish mezzo-soprano Naomi O'Connell was awarded first prize in the 2011 Concert Artists Guild International Competition and also recently starred, opposite Tyne Daly, as the aspiring opera singer Sharon Graham in Terrence McNally's "Master Class," both on Broadway and London's West End. O'Connell began voice training at age 13 and went on to graduate from The Juilliard School. Her numerous operatic roles include Bizet's "Carmen" and Mozart's "Cherubino," and she's equally at home in recitals, having debuted at Lincoln Center in 2010.
Her program "Witches, Bitches & Women in Britches" portrays female characters ranging from temptresses, sirens and witches to murderesses, kleptomaniacs and home-wreckers. These women live on the fringes of society and trample the restrictions of "shoulds and oughts."
The characters emerge from a variety of works by 15 composers on the program, including Felix Mendelssohn, Hugo Wolf, Francis Poulenc and Havelock Nelson, and a world premiere by New York-based composer Chris Berg.
Tickets are $14 and are available at the Elliott Hall and Stewart Center box offices at 765-494-3933 or 800-914-SHOW. Tickets are also available through Ticketmaster outlets.
Initiated in 1902, Purdue Convocations was one of the first professional performing arts presenters in the United States. Each year, Convocations offers the region 20-30 performances of widely varying genres: Broadway-style shows, theater, dance, children's theater, world music, jazz, and chamber music, along with rock, pop, country and comedy attractions. With a vision for connecting artists and audiences in artistic dialogue and for drawing in academic discourse, Purdue Convocations aims to promote frequent exposure to and familiarity with human cultural expression in a multitude of forms and media.
Contact: Abby Eddy, Purdue Convocations director of marketing, 765-494-9712, aeeddy@purdue.edu
Note to Journalists: Publication-quality photos are available at http://www.convocations.org/press
