From Feis Maitiú to Mozart for soprano Kim Sheehan

ACCLAIMED coloratura soprano, Kim Sheehan, will make her Cork professional debut as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro at the Curtis Auditorium in the CIT Cork School of Music, from Jan 10-12.

Described by The New York Times as “excellent” and by the Financial Times as having a voice “that sets the pulse racing,” Sheehan, 32, left her family home in Cork aged 17 to study in Dublin. After her degree in music at the DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology) Conservatory of Music and Drama, she won an award for excellence to pursue further studies. She received a distinction in postgraduate diplomas in vocal and opera studies at the Royal College of Music, in London. Sheehan is based between London and Cork, and is building a house in Myrtleville with her composer husband, Tom Hodge.

“For me, Dublin was the place to go to get a degree in which I could major in voice,” says Sheehan. “The only other place to go, at the time, was UCC, but the course there was very much theory-based, which I wasn’t necessarily interested in.”