Ava Dodd is a Lies Askonas Fellow and winner of the Boston District Met Opera/Laffont Competition. Following her performance as Second Niece in ENO’s Peter Grimes, Ava returned to perform the role of Rosina in The Barber of Seville with ENO in February 2024. Further highlights include performing the role of High Priestess in the December 2023 production of Aida at Oper Frankfurt, with an upcoming debut with Opéra National de Lorraine as Fennimore in Kurt Weill’s The Silver Lake in April 2024.

Competition success includes being awarded the Yves Paternot Prize at the 2023 Verbier Festival, the first prize in the International Grand Prix of Romania “Trophaeum Artis Cantorum” and in the Royal Dublin Society Music Bursary Competition, 2020. Ava received first prize in the Northern Ireland Opera’s Glenarm Festival of Voice Competition, and was named the “Young Opera Voice of 2019”.

Recent opera credits include Sonia in Wexford Festival Opera’s production of Camille Erlanger’s L’Aube rouge, conducted by Guillaume Tourniaire and directed by Ella Marchment, Waldvöglein in Siegfried and Oscar in Un Ballo in Maschera (Stadttheater Klagenfurt). Further opera credits include the role of Yum-Yum in Lyric Opera Ireland’s 2021 production of The Mikado by Gilbert & Sullivan, and being a Young Artist in the Wexford Factory for the second year in a row, where she played the role of Perdita in Karl Goldmark’s Ein Wintermärchen, Wexford Opera Festival 2021. Ava made her Blackwater Valley Opera Festival debut with a solo recital in August 2021.

Recent engagements include performing operatic repertoire with two other singers in a concert presented by Sir Thomas Allen at the Atheneum club in London, and performing the role of Anne Truelove with Verbier Festival Academy. Ava performed at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow in 2022, and performed with the National Symphony Orchestra for A Celebration of International Women’s Day. Ava performed as one of three RDS Bursary Prize Winners as part of RDS Bursary Prize-Winners concert with the RTE Concert Orchestra in the Oreilly Hall, UCD, Dublin. 2021 engagements included being the soprano soloist for Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra and being a soloist with the Royal Ballet’s ‘Draft Works’ performance in the Clore Studio, The Royal Opera House, London.

Ava is a master’s graduate with First Class Honours from the Royal College of Music, London, and a 2022 Belvedere Competition Finalist and winner of the Wil Keune Prize and the Guntars Kirsis Engagement.

A 2022 recipient to the Opera Europa Eva Kleinitz Scholarship, Ava is a Karaviotis Scholar and studies under the tutelage of Professor Janis Kelly. While studying with Professor Mary Brennan and Dr. Dearbhla Collins at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, she completed a BA in Music Performance and graduated with first class honours. Ava is multiple prize-winner, and was awarded The RDS Collins Memorial Award and Bursary 2021.

Ava swept the boards at the 2019 Feis Ceoil, winning seven competitions, including the Gervase Elwas Cup. In 2018, she was also awarded the Most Promising Performer award in the Irene Sandford Competition, received the Wadden Bursary and won the Overall Festival Award in Arklow Music Festival.

Photography by Olivia da Costa.