Biography
Job Title: Senior Lecturer
Courses taught: BA (Hons) Music (Classical), MA Music
Specialisms: Classical Voice
Geraldine Cassidy, soprano, was born in Dublin. She played the violin from an early age and was a member of the Irish Youth Orchestra for many years. She was also the recipient of several theatre awards as a young actress and it was while a student of musicology at Trinity College Dublin that she was encouraged to have vocal training.
She was offered a singing scholarship at the Dublin College of Music and it was as a student there that she sang her first operatic role, that of the Countess, in Mozart`s Marriage of Figaro.
Geraldine continued her singing studies in London at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich and at the Mozarteum, Salzburg. She was engaged at the Vienna State Opera as a member of the opera studio and her first professional engagements were in Ulm (Germany) as Konstanze (Entführung aus dem Serail), Violetta (La Traviata), Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus ) und Harriet in L’Eclair by Halévy. As a member of the ensemble at the Salzburg Landestheater she sang Konstanze in the Harry Kupfer production of Die Entführung and Rosina (Barber of Seville), Anne Truelove (Rakes Progress), Adina (L’Elisir d’amore), Frau Fluth (Merry Wives of Windsor), Solveig (Pier Gynt) and the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro. As a guest in Ulm, Rostock and at the Komische Oper, Berlin, she sang Gilda (Rigoletto), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Violetta and, again, Konstanze.
Geraldine has also sung many roles in Theater Basel, Switzerland, including Königin (Das Traumfresserchen), Giunone (La Calisto), Mercedes in Calixto Bieito’s Carmen, Larina (Eugen Onegin) and Marcellina (Marriage of Figaro).
Living in Alsace, France, and Basel, Switzerland, from 1998 - 2015, Geraldine devoted more and more of her time to singing teaching, building up a class of 25 – 30 regular pupils in France and Switzerland, and giving several masterclasses under the aegis of “Mission Voix, Alsace”.
Since moving to Leeds in 2015, Geraldine has been engaged as 3rd Norn (cover) for Opera North’s “Ring Cycle”, and was invited to join the teaching staff of the Leeds College of Music as Senior Lecturer in Classical Singing. She was Artistic Co-Ordinator of the joint project between the Northern School of Contemporary Dance and the LCM “Orfeo…can you hear me?”, involving almost all the singers of the school as well as six dancers from the NSCD.
