The Pebbles We Keep: composer Monica McGhee unveils her debut song cycle following her successful battle with thyroid cancer

Soprano, composer and alumna Monica McGhee will unveil her debut song cycle, The Pebbles We Keep, on Sunday 23 November at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) in the Stevenson Hall. McGhee has taken poems penned by Scottish women throughout history – spanning 400 years – and set them to music. They’ll be performed by singers of all ages with a female actor reciting each poem in its original form before each song.

McGhee explains, "The Pebbles We Keep remembers the poets who were often overlooked in their own lifetimes, while offering opportunities for today’s Scottish singers to be heard, in a bid to rebalance the deficit of female roles available within the opera world. It aims to honour Scotland’s cultural roots while creating new repertoire that future generations of singers can perform."

The poems reflect a wide range of women’s experiences, from disability and working-class struggle to loss, resilience and creativity, by writers including Janet Hamilton, Jessie Anderson, Carolina Oliphant (Baroness Nairne), Mary Mackellar and Mary Symon with the oldest poem being Elizabeth Melville’s Ane Godlie Dreame from 1603 – the first published poem by a Scottish woman. Contemporary poet Lisa Kennedy’s The Pebbles We Keep gives the cycle its name.

Monica McGhee began her musical life as a pianist and trumpet player. She studied at RCS’s Junior Conservatoire of Music before embarking on her Bachelor of Music undergraduate degree in Vocal Performance. Monica was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2017 which looked like it would put a premature end to her career. As she battled the disease and subsequent treatment to repair her voice following emergency surgery, she spent a number of seasons singing extra chorus at the Royal Opera House, with highlights including a tour to Tokyo in 2019.

Having successfully recovered from her illness, she was accepted as the soprano Young Artist at The National Opera Studio for 2020-2021. Recent roles include the title role in Tosca for Opera Bohemia, Beatrice in Beatrice and Benedict for Mid Wales Opera and the leading role of Iolanta for If Opera. Monica made her English National Opera debut earlier this year, playing Mary Beaton in Thea Musgrave's Mary, Queen of Scots [see my review], on the anniversary of her cancer diagnosis.

The video shows Monica McGhee performing one of the songs from The Pebbles We Keep 

Full details from the RCS website. 

Vivid presence & engagement: Peter Whelan & Irish Baroque Orchestra in Bach's Mass in B minor at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Bach: Mass in B Minor - Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Bach: Mass in B minor; Rachel Redmond, Katie Bray, Hugh Cutting, Anthony Gregory, Matthew Brook, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Peter Whelan; Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
Reviewed 1 November 2025

No novelties, simply a desire to present the music in as compelling and engaged manner as possible with just ten singers and chamber forces

Having seen Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra in action at the BBC Proms and at Wigmore Hall, it was a great joy to be able to catch them on their home turf when, on Saturday 1 November 2025, the performed Bach's Mass in B minor at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin with soloists Rachel Redmond, Katie Bray, Hugh Cutting, Anthony Gregory and Matthew Brook, plus ripieno singers Aisling Kenny, Amy Wood, Laura Lamph, Christopher Bowen and William Gaunt.

Christ Church Cathedral is the elder of Dublin's two medieval cathedrals. Founded in the 11th century and rebuilt in stone in the 12 century, collapse and neglect meant that in the later 19th century George Street was brought in to renovate the building. It is now a handsome mix of surviving medieval and Victorian pastiche, complete with some superb encaustic tiles [see my post on Instagram]. The building was pretty much full for the concert and from my seat in the fourth row the acoustics proved to be surprisingly warm and sympathetic, and chatting to other audience members after the concert their experience was similar.

Like his other great late summation works such as The Art of Fugue, Bach left no clear idea of performance intentions with the Mass in B minor. Certainly, as the admirable article in the programme book by Andrew Johnstone explained, most of the movements are based on pre-existing material. But what did Bach intend? With Bach's passions, musicologists and performers can mine the surviving performance information and debate (usually rather passionately) what was intended, but with the mass performers are more on their own.

Bach: Mass in B Minor - Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Thankfully, Peter Whelan cleaves to the preference for smaller forces. His five soloists were joined by five ripieno singers to create a choir and it was clear we had a vocal ensemble of ten solo singers, not a bland choral blend. They were complemented by an instrumental group of eleven strings, woodwind, trumpets and timpani, plus organ along with harpsichord played by Peter Whelan. In terms of orchestral balance, the organ/harpsichord keyboard contribution felt a little underpowered but that was the only complaint. There were no novelties, simply a desire to present the music in as compelling and engaged manner as possible.

Il viaggio a Reims: members of the Wexford Factory dazzle in Rossini's occasional showpiece despite moving the action to an asylum

Rossini: Il viaggio a Reims - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims; Wexford Factory, director Rosetta Cucchi, conductor Manuel Hartinger, Wexford Festival Opera; National Opera House
Reviewed 31 October 2025

A brilliant showcase for the young artists of the Wexford Factory who dazzled and engaged in Rossini's showpiece music, though transferring the action to an insane asylum felt in doubtful taste

Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims was an occasional piece, not so much because of the references to Charles X's coronation in Rheims to which the opera refers, but because the occasion drew forth a cast of 14 distinguished soloists including Giuditta Pasta (for whom Bellini wrote the title roles in La sonnambula and Norma) and Laure Cinti-Damoreau (who would premiere several of Rossini's French operas).

Since the work's modern premiere at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro in 1984, the piece has become more common on stages as something of a party piece, with recent UK performances including at Covent Garden (as a showcase for the Jette Parker Young Artists) and more recently at English Touring Opera [see my review]. These performances demonstrated that the work does have a plot and that it works in situations divorced from the original proceedings.

At this year's Wexford Festival Opera, Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims was chosen as a showcase for the Wexford Factory young artists and to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the work's premiere. The work was performed in an orchestral reduction by the conductor Manuel Hartinger that used around 14 instruments (plus on-stage flute and harp). I caught the final of a series of morning performances at the National Opera House on Friday 31 October 2025. The production was directed by Rosetta Cucchi, the festival's artistic director, with costumes by Massimo Carlotto and lighting by Paolo Bonnapace.

The cast was made up of singers from the Wexford Factory, with five roles being double cast, and from the festival chorus - Maria Matthews, Cerys MacAllister, Laure Aherne, Valeriia Gobunova, Gabe Clarke, Sean Tester, Aqshin Khudaverdiyev, Ihor Mostovoi, Seamus Brady, Tong Guo, Joshua McCullough, Conor Prendeville, Rory Lynch, Meilir Jones and Loughlin Deegan.

Rossini: Il viaggio a Reims - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Perhaps because the performance had originally been planned as a semi-staging, though there was in fact nothing semi about it, Cucchi chose to reject the original scenario and set the opera in an asylum. As Cucchi explains in the programme book, 'a whimsical asylum, where each aristocrat becomes a lovable patient, each with his own delightful obsession'. Whilst she claims that the production is not 'mocking illness' there was something a little uncomfortable about watching these various obsessives.