Deirdre Higgins is an Irish soprano and is currently in the final year of her Masters of Music (Performance) in the TU Dublin Conservatoire. Here she studies under the excellent tutelage of Mairéad Buicke and Mairéad Hurley.

Deirdre is a multi-award winner and had great success in the 2023 Feis Ceoil competitions where she won the Nancy Calthorpe Cup, Lieder Prize, Mrs. P.J. Geoghegan Memorial Cup, and the Gervase Elwes Memorial Cup. She also received the Birr Lions Club Bursary at the 2023 Birr Festival of Music. In 2022, Deirdre had her first professional opera engagement when she joined the chorus of Irish National Opera for their national tour of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda. Shortly following this she joined the chorus of Wexford Festival Opera for four productions – Lalla-Roukh (David), La Tempesta (Halevy), Armida (Dvořák) and the premier of Alberto Caruso’s The Master.

In the summer of 2022 Deirdre attended the ‘Corsi Internazionali di Musica di Lurisia Terme 2022’ where under the instruction of Maestro Ugo Benelli she performed the roles of La Contessa di Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro (Mozart) and Adina in L’Elisir D’Amore (Donizetti). She received high praise for her performances with reviews such as – “in half a century of activity in the operatic field I have rarely heard this very difficult aria from the Contessa sung so well” (Bruno Baudissone). 

         Richard McGrath Piano

Richard studied at NUI, Maynooth, the Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of
Music and Drama in London. He was a trainee répétiteur at English National Opera and since then he
has worked with companies including Irish National Opera, Northern Ireland Opera, Wide Open
Opera, Opera Theatre Company and Lyric Opera Productions. Richard is a répétiteur in the vocal
department at the TU Dublin Conservatoire, he is a coach for the Irish National Opera Studio
programme for young artists and is a regular recitalist with singers.
Richard has played with the RTE Concert Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the
Irish Chamber Orchestra and the orchestra of English National Opera. Radio broadcasts include
performances on RTE Radio 1, RTE Lyric FM, and BBC Radio 3’s In Tune