Venue & Date: St. Barrahane's Church, Castletownshend, Co. Cork.
Date: Sunday 23 August, 2026, 8pm
Tickets €25
Online (booking fee), at the door, at Thornhill Electrical Skibbereen or text/call 086 226 4797
At the door only: children under 13 free, students under 19 half price
Programme
Schubert - three songs about the sea
Am Meer, Des Fischers Liebesglück, Fischerweise
Hamilton Harty Sea Wrack
Joan Trimble My Grief on the Sea – Douglas Hyde
Rebecca Clarke The Seal Man – John Masefield
Berlioz – La Captive Orientale – Victor Hugo
INTERVAL
Barber 3 Songs Op. 10– Joyce
Interspersed with alternative settings of the same texts - two by Szymanowski and one by Muriel Herbert
Rain has fallen – Sleep Now – I hear an Army
Herbert – Lean out of the Window – Joyce
Bridge – Golden Hair – Joyce
Marmion – Goldenhair – Joyce
Rebecca Clarke The Cloths of Heaven – Yeats
Rebecca Clarke Shy One – Yeats
Britten Sally Gardens – Yeats
Pendelton Bid Adieu - Joyce
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Irish mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty is a singer who has firmly established a reputation as a respected interpreter of both early and contemporary works, alongside maintaining a busy schedule in mainstream opera and concert repertoire. She is an alumna of the RIAM Dublin, MDW Vienna, and Oper Frankfurt Young Artist Programme, and is currently an Artistic Partner to Irish National Opera as well as the Artist in Association to the Irish Chamber Orchestra for the 2023-2024 season
Regularly praised for her musicality and intelligence, her integrity as an artist and the warmth, clarity and agility of her voice, her opera repertoire includes many of the important lyric and coloratura mezzo-soprano roles, such as Hänsel, Dido, Ruggiero, Dorabella, Cherubino, Ariodante, Orfeo and Sesto. On the concert platform her repertoire spans most of the major sacred concert works, including all the principal works by J. S .Bach as well as Messiah, Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor and a broad song repertoire in addition to numerous chamber music works. She is also a dedicated song recitalist, most recently appearing in performances with pianists Finghin Collins, Jonathan Ware and Graham Johnson.
Career highlights to date include her London and Amsterdam opera debuts with The Second Violinist at the Barbican Theatre, and the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, her Wexford Festival Opera debut as Lucy Talbot in the European première of William Bolcom’s Dinner at Eight, the title role in Irish National Opera’s critically-acclaimed Orfeo ed Euridice and her debut at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, where she premiered a new opera, Proserpine by Silvia Colasanti, to critical acclaim.
Current and recent projects include Dorabella for Irish National Opera, Sesto (Handel) for Blackwater opera, as well as song, oratorio and chamber music concerts in Ireland, France, Germany and Switzerland.
A regular collaborator with orchestras across Europe, her discography includes La Traviata on Naxos DVD with the NDR Radiophilharmonie alongside Thomas Hampson and Marina Rebeka as well as The Mountebanks (Gilbert/Cellier) on CD with the BBC Concert Orchestra, as well as a critically-acclaimed disc of Schubert songs with pianist Jonathan Ware, was released in May 2020. 2024 will see the release of two discs of the songs of C.V.Stanford to commemorate the centenary of the composer.
One of Ireland's most celebrated musicians and significant musical ambassadors, Finghin Collins was born in Dublin in 1977 and, following initial lessons with his sister Mary, studied piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music with John O'Conor and at the Geneva Conservatoire with Dominique Merlet. His international career was launched by winning first prize at the Clara Haskil Competition in Switzerland in 1999. He has performed in recital and with major orchestras throughout Europe and the United States, as well as in the Far East and Australia.
Finghin Collins makes a significant contribution to the musical landscape of his native Ireland, where he resides. Since 2013, he has been Artistic Director of Music for Galway, while he is also the founding Artistic Director, since 2006, of the New Ross Piano Festival in Wexford. In March 2023 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Dublin International Piano Competition. In 2023 and 2025 he chaired the international jury of the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Switzerland.
In 2017, the National University of Ireland conferred on Finghin Collins an honorary Degree of Doctor of Music.