Notas del episodio

In this episode of Turning Points, Patricia Killeen welcomed Franco-Irish soprano Fiona

Fauchois. Fiona began her musical training as a pianist in Paris while studying art history at

the École du Louvre, before studying voice with Frédéric Gindraux at the Haute École de

Musique de Lausanne.

Her repertoire ranges from early music to contemporary works, including Stravinsky,

Schoenberg and Gérard Pesson. In 2024, she sang Tatiana in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene

Onegin. That year she was also awarded ‘Best Contemporary Performance’ at the

Kattenburg Competition.

Fiona often creates performances combining different art forms. Her production Sorelle,

inspired by the paintings of Artemisia Gentileschi and music by pioneering female

composers, won first prize in the Osez! creation competition.

She regularly performs with pianist Nataliya Nikolskaya, with whom she explores twentieth-

century art songs for voice and piano.

Having recently completed her voice studies in Lausanne, Fiona has returned to Paris and

will also go to Dublin in November to perform in Carmen with the Irish National Opera.

On 21 September, Fiona and Nataliya will perform Uisce – A Tale of Salt and Wood at the

Centre Culturel Irlandais (CCI), Paris 75005, at an event organised by the Cercle Littéraire

Irlandais.

Created by Fiona, the performance combines songs by Samuel Barber and Benjamin Britten

with spoken words from writer Kathleen Handrick’s fictional piece, Michael Rogers,

Seanchaí: Monologue. Rogers was a seanchaí (storyteller) interned at Frongoch in 1916.

As a musical prelude, flautist Ilona Csibi-Lockhart, formerly of the Royal Irish Academy of

Music and Trinity College Dublin, will play a very innovative rendition of The Foggy Dew,

bringing us back to the Easter Rising.

Uisce – A Tale of Salt and Wood, 21 September at 19:00 in the Chapelle Saint-Patrick, (CCI)

is a free event. Register on this link to attend:

Photo credit : Romane Carbonnel