Paula Murrihy

Murrihy opens her 2025/26 season at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona as Fox in Barrie Kosky’s production of Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen conducted by Josep Pons. Other opera highlights of the season include Ariane in Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-Bleu at the Teatro Real, Madrid and the role of Euryale in the world premiere of a newly commissioned opera Medusa at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels, composed by Iain Bell and directed by the opera’s librettist Lydia Steier. On the concert platform, Murrihy performs Mahler’s Lieder einies fahrenden Gesellen with the Hessisches Staatsorchester Wiesbaden conducted by Leo McFall, she sings Goffredo in Handel’s Rinaldo on tour to China and South Korea with The English Concert and Harry Bicket, and performs La vierge Marie in Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ in Glasgow and Edinburgh with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev. She also performs arias from Bach’s St Matthew Passion and Handel’s Messiah with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal conducted by Kent Nagano and sings the title role in Handel’s Serse with the Academy of Ancient Music and Laurence Cummings. Future plans include returns to Oper Frankfurt, La Monnaie and the Royal Opera & Ballet, Covent Garden.

Notable operatic highlights of recent seasons include Waitress in a new production of Kaija Saariaho's Innocence at the Semperoper Dresden, both Fox in The Cunning Little Vixen and Prince Charmant in Massenet’s Cendrillon for the Opéra de Paris, Komponist in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier for Santa Fe Opera, Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Royal Ballet & Opera, Covent Garden, title role Ariodante at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, Stéphano in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at the Metropolitan Opera, Idamante in Handel’s Idomeneo at the Salzburg Festival, Sesto and Octavian for Dutch National Opera, Nicklausse and Muse in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Palau de les Arts, Valencia and both Octavian and title role Carmen for Irish National Opera.

Murrihy tours extensively on the concert platform. She works regularly with Harry Bicket and The English Concert, last season performing Sesto in Handel's Giulio Cesare on tour to the US and at London’s Barbican. Other concert appearances include Mysliveček’s oratorio Abramo ed Isacco with Collegium 1704 on tour to Prague, Dresden and Amsterdam and at the Salzburg Festival, Mozart’s Requiem with the Camerata Salzburg and in Chicago with Music of the Baroque, both conducted by Jane Glover. She has performed Didon on a European tour of Berlioz’s Les Troyens with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, conducted by Dinis Sousa, closing with a performance at the BBC Proms. She has toured Bach’s St John Passion with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and has collaborated with MusicAeterna and Teodor Currentzis, with performances including Così fan tutte, Le nozze di Figaro, Purcell’s Indian Queen, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and Das Knaben Wunderhorn and Hindemith’s Die Junge Magd.

Additional concert highlights include Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde at the Tiroler Festspiele Erl, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Haydn’s Paukenmesse at the BBC Proms, Berlioz's Les Nuits d'Été with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Spanish National Orchestra and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Handel’s Solomon, Alexander’s Feast and Honneger’s Judith for the Nederlandse Programma Stichting and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In the United States she has worked with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where she premiered John Harbison’s Symphony No. 6, the Philadelphia Orchestra for Messiah, the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston as Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro and Juno/Ino in Semele and the St Paul Chamber Orchestra in performances of Bach’s St Matthew Passion.

An accomplished recitalist, Murrihy has given performances at the Wigmore Hall with both Malcolm Martineau and Sholto Kynoch, at Boston’s Jordan Hall, the Aldeburgh Festival, the Oxford Lieder Festival, at Oper Frankfurt and at the Diaghilev Festival in Perm. In 2020 she released her debut solo album I will walk with my love with American pianist Tanya Blaich for Orchid Classics. The recording explores folk inspired songs and myths and features works by Brahms, Mahler, Debussy and Grieg, as well as traditional Irish folksong.

2025/26 season / 856 words. Not to be altered without permission.