She has appeared in Spain, Italy, Mexico, the United States, and Ireland, in such roles as Violetta (La Traviata), the Marchesa (Verdi’s Un giorno di regno), Adalgisa (Norma), Desdemona (Rossini’s Otello), Alice Ford (Falstaff – with Julius Rudel), First Lady (Die Zauberflöte), and Hanna (The Merry Widow). Her New York City Opera debut was as Miss Jessel in Britten’s Turn of the Screw. Performances in the United States also include Barena in Jenufa at the Spoleto USA Festival and La Traviata at the Baltimore Opera. Her performances as the Duchess in Powder Her Face by British composer Thomas Adès at the Aspen Music Festival, conducted by the composer, and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music under Robert Spano led to engagements at the Mariinsky Theater and the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia.
An experienced concert artist, Ms O’Brien has performed at Chicago’s Rush Hour Concert Series in an all-Schubert program, broadcast live on WFMT, with clarinetist, Larry Combs. Previous Rush Hour appearances include Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras Nr 5 and Falla’s Siete Canciones Populares Españolas with cellists of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera. She has featured on Impromptu, WFMT’s live music and conversations series. She was a soloist with Grant Park Music Festival in Mendelssohn’s Symphony Nr 2, Lobgesang, and Handel’s Messiah with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, the Boise Philharmonic, and Chicago’s Apollo. She sang Orff’s Carmina Burana, Mozart’s Requiem, and Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony with the Grammy Award-winning Washington Chorus at the Kennedy Center, also touring with the Washington Chorus is Germany and Austria. She has sung Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Mozart’s Ch’io mi scordi di te at the Aspen Music Festival, and Mendelssohn’s Symphony Nr 2 and Nielsen’s Symphony Nr 3 with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland.
Performances have also include a seasonal concert of Handel and Bach with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra in Canada, and recitals at Classical Monday Concerts at The Cultural Center and Friday Noonday Concert at Fourth Presbyterian Church, both in Chicago, and Meet the Virtuoso Series at the 92nd St Y, a recital at the Tenri Cultural Institute, and at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, all in New York
On recording, Ms O’Brien is to be heard in Handel’s Deidamia (Nerea), James Adler’s Memento Mori: An Aids Requiem, and Nielsen’s Symphony Nr 3 on the Naxos Label. Ms O’Brien holds a Bachelors Degree from Trinity College, Dublin and a Masters of Music from the Juilliard School, and trained at the Juilliard Young Artist Program.