Winner of the 2015 Wexford Festival Opera Aria Friends Award and WFO and PwC Emerging Artist Bursary, Irish Soprano Rachel Croash is a graduate of the Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Opera Theatre Company HUB Artist Programme.
In 2017 Rachel was a finalist in the 9th Internationale Gesangswettbewerb Festspiele Immling and was subsequently invited to sing in the Festival’s Verdi Gala as well as performing the role of Amore in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.
In 2018 Rachel performed in the premiere of Brian Irvine’s ‘Opera – It’s all about like…’ commissioned for the launch of Irish National Opera, other roles include Mademoiselle Silberklang (Der Schauspieldirektor, Irish National Opera), Una (Eithne, Opera Theatre Company), Mrs.Coyle (Owen Wingrave, Opera Collective Ireland), Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte, Lismore Opera Festival), Susanna (Susanna’s Secret, Opera Theatre Company), Serafina (Il Campanello); Reneé (Koanga); Dew Fairy (Hänsel and Gretel); Annina (La Traviata, Wexford Festival Opera), Valencienne (The Merry Widow, Lyric Opera Productions), Frasquita (Carmen, RTÉ Concert Orchestra; Cork Operatic Society), Gorm (Flatpack, Ulysses Theatre Company) and Narrator (The Oldest Woman in Limerick, Wide Open Opera).
She has recently performed Elvira in Rossini’s l’Italiana il Algeri for Blackwater Valley Opera Opera Festival.
Among her project this season and next: Mabel in Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance and Musetta in La Bohème and Marzelline in Fidelio at the Lyric Opera Dublin, Susanna (Nozze di Figaro) and Kate Pinkerton (Madama Butterfly) for Cork Opera House, Clorinda in La Cenerentota, First lady (The Magic Flute), Frasquita in Carmen for Irish National Opera. In concert, Laurette in Bizet’s Le Docteur Miracle for Wexford Festival Opera.
She has performed in Concert with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, The Wexford Sinfonia, City of Dublin Chamber Orchestra, Drogheda International Classical Music Series, Ardee Baroque Festival and in Recital for The Music in Great Irish Houses Festival, Music for Galway, Dublin Philharmonic Society, Sligo Con Brio, The Contemporary Music Centre and at The Metropolitan Club, New York.
Oratorio engagements include Händel’s Messiah with the Association of Irish Choirs, Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten with The Guinness Choir, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solenelle with Culwick Choral Society; Maynooth University Choral Society, Mozart’s Vesperae Solennes Confessore and Bach’s Cantata 41 at St.Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh and Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music and Mozart’s Requiem at The National Concert Hall, Dublin.
Rachel has recorded with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, singing ‘Press Closer’ from Michael Gallen’s suite ‘Wilde Stories’ and with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Robert O’Dwyer’s ‘Eithne’.