AvaDodd

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Soprano
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Keiron Cooke

Keiron Cooke

Associate Director

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

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About Ava

Irish soprano Ava Dodd studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music. She won the Yves Paternot Award at the Verbier Festival in 2023. She is a Harewood Artist at the English National Opera and an Associate Artist of The Mozartists.

Highlights in her 2024/25 season include returns to the Wexford Festival as Tilburina in Stanford's The Critic, to the English National Opera as Adina The Elixir of Love and Barbarina The Marriage of Figaro and to Oper Frankfurt as Madeleine, Madame de Latour in Adolphe Adam's Le postillon de Lonjumeau.

Recent engagements have included include Second Niece Peter Grimes and Rosina The Barber of Seville for the English National Opera, Fenimore in Kurt Weill's Der Silbersee at the Opéra national de Lorraine and Sonia in Camille Erlanger’s L’Aube rouge at the Wexford Festival.

A member of the ensemble of the Stadttheater Klagenfurt during the 2022/23 season, she sang Waldvögel Siegfried, Oscar Un ballo in maschera, Mirjam in the world premiere of Bernard Land's opera HIOB, and the soprano solos in Carmina Burana.

Ava is based in Dublin

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Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

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Season Highlights

Oct 2024 - Nov 2024
Wexford Festival
The Critic (Tilburina) Ciarán Crangle (conductor)
Dec 2024 - Dec 2024
English National Opera
The Elixir of Love (Adina) Teresa Riveiro Böhm (conductor)
Feb 2025 - Feb 2025
English National Opera
The Marriage of Figaro (Barbarina) Ainārs Rubiķis (conductor)

Video

Photos

Selected Repertoire

Mahler Symphony No.4

News

Press

  • The Critic

    Wexford Festival
    Oct 2024 - Nov 2024

    • Die Sängerinnen und Sänger changieren gekonnt zwischen ihrer Rolle als Sänger bzw. Sängerin und der Rolle im gespielten Stück. Ava Dodd punktet mit glockenklarem höhensicherem Sopran und zeigt sich, wenn sie von Puff kritisiert wird, als Operndiva sehr zickig.

    • Ava Dodd as Tilburina was the consummate actress, managing to successfully portray boredom with having to repeat her lines and yet somehow also singing with grace and elegance.

    • The improbable tale of a Governor’s daughter Tiburina, a superb Ava Dodd, and her doomed love for Spaniard Don Ferolo Wiskerandos, an equally terrific Dane Suarez, portraying a passion so…passionate it’s worth dying twice for. Throw in the historical Sir Walter Raleigh (Ben McAteer) and Sir Christopher Hatton (Oliver Johnston), the Governor (Rory Dunne), a love lorn beefeater (Gyula Nagy doubling up as Earl of Leicester) and some amorous nieces (Hannah O’Brien and Carolyn Holt) and all the ingredients are set in play for the grandest of grand operas, minus the ballet.

    • C’est d’ailleurs sans doute Ava Dodd, son interprète, qui se voit attribuer la partie la plus conséquente avec une enchaînement de soliloques dont la soprano irlandaise ne fait qu’une bouchée. Entendue ce printemps dans le Lac d’argent de Kurt Weill à l’opera National de Lorraine, débutant cet hiver en Adina à l’ English National Opera de Londres, elle bénéficie d’un timbre ductile, tout en agilité. Son talent de comédienne s’avère patent dans l’hilarante scène de folie parodique comme dans la la pathétique scène d’amour où Dane Suarez lui donne la réplique avec panache et de belles nuances en dépit d’un soutien intermittent.

    • Stanford reserves his best vocal writing for Tilburina, which soprano Ava Dodd exploits to the full, while the choruses swell with typical Stanford grandeur.

    • Ava Dodd performed her initial pastoral aria with charm and elegance while imbuing the vocal line with a sumptuous tone. She switched seamlessly between irritation with Puff’s interruptions and the inflated love music of the opera.

    • The singers, meanwhile, never break character, though with voices of the calibre of Ben McAteer (Sir Walter Raleigh) and Ava Dodd (the geographically named heroine Tilburina) you didn’t really need much realism.

Discography