Deirdre Higgins, Soprano Recital

Join 2024 winner of the Bernadette Greevy Bursary, Deirdre Higgins for an evening of song. The evening will also feature the premier of a newly commissioned composition by Harry O’Connor, winner of the Jerome Hynes Young Composers’ Award 2024.

Deirdre’s 2024 Bernadette Greevy Bursary winning performance was adjudicated by Grammy-nominated conductor Elaine Kelly and renowned tenor Gavan Ring. 

The award is named in memory of the renowned Irish mezzo Bernadette Greevy (1940–2008), who was Artistic Director of the Anna Livia International Opera Festival and Artist in Residence at the Dublin Institute of Technology. The award aims to provide opportunities for emerging Irish singers.

Deirdre is in her second year of the Irish National Opera Studio. As a studio artist, she performed Mimì in Puccini’s La Bohème at the dress rehearsal in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. Her other studio covers include Margeurite in Gounod’s Faust and Rosalinda in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. Deirdre looks forward to performing her debut role with Irish National Opera this summer, where she will sing Giannetta in Donizetti’s L’Elisir D’Amore.

Deirdre has also worked with the esteemed Wexford Festival Opera. In the 2024 festival she debuted the role Eileen O’Doherty in the newly commissioned Lady Gregory in America by Alberto Caruso.

A multi-award winner, Deirdre was the winner of the coveted Bernadette Greevy Bursary 2024. She has also received the Nancy Calthorpe Cup, Lieder Prize, Mrs. P.J. Geoghegan Memorial Cup, and the Gervase Elwes Memorial Cup at the 2023 Feis Ceoil. Following on from that success that same year, she also received the Birr Lions Club Bursary at the Birr Festival of Music.

Deirdre made her debut with the National Symphony Orchestra as a soloist as a part of their 2024 Summer Lunchtime Concert series in the National Concert Hall. She made her return to the NCH and NSO this February when she performed in the Valentine’s Opera Gala as part of Celebrating the Voice with Tara Erraught.

Presented by the NCH  
National Concert Hall wishes to acknowledge the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport, and Media for its kind support of the Bernadette Greevy Bursary for Singers.