Margaret O'Connell

Mezzo-soprano

Personal website: http://www.mezzomargaret.com

Mezzo-soprano MARGARET O'CONNELL enjoys a versatile musical career in opera, contemporary music, musical theatre, oratorio, recordings, and film. In its January/February 2007 issue, Fanfare Magazine hailed her as “a superb mezzo, who handles the frequent difficulties with seeming ease.” She has several premieres to her credit, including Six Lyrics to Poems of Marilyn Hacker by Tamara Cashour and Traveling West by Randall Snyder, recorded on the North/South label in 2004. She created the title role in I Dwell in Possibility, written by Miriam Raiken-Kolb about the life of poet Emily Dickinson and including eight original songs composed especially for her. Ms. O’Connell also participated in SongFest 2004, working with composers John Harbison and James Primosch. She has premiered additional works by Eric Chasalow, Antonio DeFeo, Dorothy Chang, and Dan Crozier.

Ms. O’Connell’s operatic credits include Adalgisa in Norma, Dido in Dido and Aeneas, Dorabella in Così fan tutte, Mercedes in Carmen, Florence Pike in Albert Herring, Maman in L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, Giulietta in Tales of Hoffman, Cathleen in Riders to the Sea, Flora in La Traviata, and Berta in Il Barbiere di Siviglia. An accomplished concert singer, her roles include Handel’s Messiah, Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit, and Michael Haydn’s Oratorio.

In the musical theatre arena, Ms. O’Connell has appeared as Martha in The Secret Garden with the MIT Players and the Singer/Fiddler Jones in Spoon River Anthology with Musical Theatre Works (NYC). Off-Broadway credits include Young Jennie in Portrait of Jennie (with Brent Barrett) and Gabriella Winterova in Children of Terezin. She has recorded the roles of Lady Thiang (The King and I) and Aldonza (Man of La Mancha) for Stage Stars Records, and a Mermaid (Bernstein’s Peter Pan) for Koch International Records. She also appeared as Emily in the Disney Channel film Starlight. She holds degrees in violin and voice from Oberlin College Conservatory and McGill University.