20 Shots of Opera Press Book 2021

Table of Contents
INTERVIEWS ....................................................................................................................... 5
Print/Online ................................................................................................................................................. 5
Opera Magazine – George Hall ................................................................................................... 6
Interview with Fergus Sheil ......................................................................................................................... 6
The Irish Times – Michael Dervan ............................................................................................. 11
Interview with Elaine Kelly, Hugh O'Conor, Conor Linehan, Ena Brennan and Stephanie Dufresne ...... 11
Opera Today – Claire Seymour ................................................................................................. 17
Interview with Fergus Sheil ....................................................................................................................... 17
The Irish Times – Dierdre Falvey ............................................................................................... 25
Interview with Elaine Kelly and Gavan Ring .............................................................................................. 25
PREVIEWS ........................................................................................................................ 28
Sunday Business Post – Dick O’Riordan .................................................................................... 29
Place de l’Opera – Jordi Kooiman ............................................................................................. 31
Ôlyrix ....................................................................................................................................... 33
RADIO .............................................................................................................................. 35
BBC Radio 3 – In Tune ............................................................................................................... 36
Interview with Fergus Sheil ....................................................................................................................... 36
RTÉ Radio 1 – Sunday with Miriam O’Callaghan ........................................................................ 37
Interview with Emma and Mark O’Halloran ............................................................................................. 37
RTÉ Radio 1 – Arena ................................................................................................................. 38
Interview with Hugh O’Connor & Éna Brennan ......................................................................... 38
RnaG - An Cúinne Dána ............................................................................................................ 39
Interview with Gemma Ni Bhriain ............................................................................................................. 39
Bayerischer Rundfunk/Deutschlandfunk .................................................................................. 40
Interview with Linda Buckley, Jennifer Walsh, Hannah Peel & Fergus Sheil ........................................... 40
RTÉ CULTURE ONLINE ....................................................................................................... 41
20 Shots Of Opera - inside the INO's short opera showcase – Fergus Sheil ................................ 42
20 Shots of Opera features ....................................................................................................... 46
Glaoch by Linda Buckley ............................................................................................................................. 47
The Wait by Emma O'Halloran ................................................................................................................... 47
The Patient Woman by Conor Linehan ....................................................................................................... 47
Ghost Apples by Irene Buckley ................................................................................................................... 47
Mrs. Streicher by Gerald Barry .................................................................................................................... 47
Rupture by Ena Brennan ............................................................................................................................. 47
Verballing by David Coonan ....................................................................................................................... 47
Her Name by Alex Dowling ......................................................................................................................... 47
Through and Through by Peter Fahey ........................................................................................................ 47
The Colour Green Robert Coleman ............................................................................................................. 47
erth upon erth by Andrew Hamilton ........................................................................................................... 47
Dichotomies of Lockdown by Jenn Kirby ..................................................................................................... 47
Touch by Karen Power ................................................................................................................................ 48
Dust by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly ......................................................................................................... 48
Libris Solar by Jennifer Walshe. .................................................................................................................. 48

At a Loss by Michael Gallen ........................................................................................................................ 48
La Corbiere by Grainne Mulvey .................................................................................................................. 48
Close by Hannah Peel ................................................................................................................................. 48
The Gift by Evangelia Rigaki ........................................................................................................................ 48
A Message for Marty by Conor Mitchell ..................................................................................................... 48
REVIEWS .......................................................................................................................... 49
Wall Street Journal – Heidi Waleson ................................................................................ 51
The Times – Simon Thomson ............................................................................................ 53
The Guardian & Observer – Fiona Maddock ..................................................................... 54
Opera Magazine – Nick Kimberley ................................................................................... 56
........................................................................................................................................ 56
........................................................................................................................................ 57
The Stage – Steph Power .................................................................................................. 58
Opera Wire – Alan Neilson ............................................................................................... 60
“Mrs. Streicher” ......................................................................................................................................... 61
Dealing with Death .................................................................................................................................... 62
Environmental Issues ................................................................................................................................ 63
Modern Communication Technology ....................................................................................................... 64
Animation .................................................................................................................................................. 65
“The Wait” ................................................................................................................................................. 65
Psychological Dysfunction ........................................................................................................................ 66
COVID-19 .................................................................................................................................................... 68
Two Tales ................................................................................................................................................... 69
“Libra Solis” ............................................................................................................................................... 70
Opera News – Judith Malafronte ...................................................................................... 71
Seen & Heard International – Robert Beattie ................................................................... 74
The Sunday Independent - Emer O’Kelly .......................................................................... 78
Irish Independent – Katy Hayes ........................................................................................ 81
The Irish Mail on Sunday – Michael Moffat ...................................................................... 84
Sunday Business Post – Dick O’Riordan ............................................................................ 86
Journal of Music – Adrian Smith ....................................................................................... 87
Gerald Barry – Mrs Streicher ................................................................................................................. 88
Éna Brennan – Rupture ........................................................................................................................... 88
Irene Buckley – Ghost Apples ................................................................................................................. 89
Linda Buckley – Glaoch ........................................................................................................................... 89
Robert Coleman – The Colour Green ..................................................................................................... 89
David Coonan – Verballing ...................................................................................................................... 90
Alex Dowling – Her Name ........................................................................................................................ 90
Peter Fahey – Through and Through ..................................................................................................... 90
Michael Gallen – At a Loss ...................................................................................................................... 91
Andrew Hamilton – erth upon erth ......................................................................................................... 91
Jenn Kirby – Dichotomies of Lockdown ................................................................................................. 91
Conor Linehan – The Patient Woman ........................................................................................................ 92
Conor Mitchell – A Message for Marty (Or the ‘Ring’) ........................................................................ 92
Gráinne Mulvey – La Corbière ............................................................................................................... 92
Emma O’Halloran – The Wait ................................................................................................................ 93

Hannah Peel – Close ................................................................................................................................. 93
Karen Power – TOUCH ........................................................................................................................... 94
Evangelia Rigaki – The Gift ..................................................................................................................... 94
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly – Dust ....................................................................................................... 94
Jennifer Walshe – Libris Solar ................................................................................................................ 95
The Arts Review – Chris O’Rourke ..................................................................................... 97
Der Standard (Austria) – Stefan Ender ............................................................................ 100
NMZ (Germany) – Roland H. Dippel ................................................................................ 103
FAZ – Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung – Robert Jungwirth ........................................... 105
RONDO .......................................................................................................................... 106
Opernwelt – Roloff Helsey .............................................................................................. 107
OPER! – Roland H Dippel ................................................................................................ 108

INTERVIEWS
Print/Online

Opera Magazine – George Hall
Interview with Fergus Sheil

The Irish Times – Michael Dervan
Interview with Elaine Kelly, Hugh O'Conor, Conor Linehan, Ena
Brennan and Stephanie Dufresne
Get a musical fix with 20 Shots of Opera
Irish National Opera commissioned 20 short operas that were
composed and quickly produced for video
Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 05:00
Setting up a shot from Benedict Schlepper-Connolly’s Dust. Photograph: Kip Carroll
“If I wanted to do this I wouldn’t have started from here.” It’s such an obvious point that
nobody has actually yet bothered to make it to me about any of the musical activities they
have managed to present under the duress of Covid-19. In the case of Irish National
Opera, artistic director Fergus Sheil would have to make the rather surreal point that “if I

wanted to commission 20 new operas, I wouldn’t have begun with a production of
Rossini’s William Tell”.
But the cancellation of the first William Tell production in Ireland since 1877 – originally
scheduled for November – was actually the starting point for 20 Shots of Opera.
INO commissioned 20 short operas that were composed, rehearsed and then produced for
video in a ridiculously short space of time in the Gaiety Theatre, where William Tell was
originally to have returned to the Irish stage. I say ridiculously short because opera
planning is usually a matter of years, and INO’s new operas have gone from genesis to
finished product in a matter of months. Even though each opera was limited to a
maximum of two performers on stage, the list of composers, librettists, singers, directors,
designers, video and audio producers, instrumentalists, conductors (working with two
ensembles from the RTÉ Concert Orchestra) and stage crew comes to a total of 162
people.
Conductor Elaine Kelly, a member of Irish National Opera’s ABL Aviation Opera
Studio, shared the conducting duties with Sheil himself. She talks of her delight at having
the opportunity to return to working with people in a room, even if the experience did
turn out to be unlike anything else she had ever experienced. Her description of how,
during rehearsals, everyone had to be socially distanced and wear masks, extends to the
moment when she first saw the singers fill their powerful lungs and almost inhale their
masks in the process. When it came to the audio recording with the orchestral musicians
in the theatre, the distances had to be even greater because everyone had to be so fully
shielded from the now unmasked singers.
Kelly conducted nine of the 20 operas, and says that during rehearsals she could hear the
work of the project’s other teams working under Fergus Sheil in a nearby space at the
Artane School of Music. Gerald Barry’s Mrs Streicher, which is for tenor and tuba and
was conducted and directed by the composer, sometimes also featured in the mix.
Normally musicians complain about external sounds that intrude on their work, but in the
world of Covid-19 the mere fact of people working nearby seems to have been simply
heart-warming. And, of course,here was also the excitement of hearing the unfamiliar
new music that was taking shape in the background.
Sessions
Not all of the composers were able to be at the rehearsals, and they were kept in the loop
by Zoom, with phone recordings also sent on after the sessions. In spite of the limitations
of those recordings, they proved essential to the sessions becoming interactive, with
composers sometimes adapting the scores on the basis of the files from the rehearsals.

Filming Conor Linehan’s The Patient Woman. Photograph: Laura Sheehan
Yet the final results are anything but what you might expect from filmed opera. Think
instead, she says, of opera as film, with the imagery and the general approach considered
in the first instance for the camera lens. Social distancing meant that the final videos of
everything she conducted had to be mimed – under her supervision – to the pre-recorded
soundtrack. The singers were then unmasked but not allowed to sing, so that the cameras
could be positioned that bit closer.
Kelly conveys very strongly the stimulation and excitement of dealing with so many
works in such a short space of time, and says the experience makes the preparation of a
single two- or three-hour opera seem straightforward by comparison. Time in the theatre
was tightly controlled, and, with the extravagant distancing, she says she felt she was “50
yards” in front of the singers and musicians. She found it very challenging to find the
kind of tight co-ordination that the music demanded and that listeners have come to take
for granted.
Sole voice
Soprano Sinéad Campbell Wallace is the sole voice in Andrew Hamilton’s erth upon
erth, which INO’s publicity describes as “a response to a terrifying walk through a Covid
Hot Zone in a Birmingham hospital in April as seen through the lens of a Medieval
English poem”.
Hamilton was actually in hospital at the time, and in rehearsal he encouraged the singer to
belt out high notes with heavy vibrato to help replicate the cacophony of ambulance
sirens and beeping machines he could hear from his bed. She describes the orchestral
writing as creating “a wall of sound” behind her. Her first reaction when she was asked
to take part was, “oh my God! Because I had never done anything contemporary.”

She was also concerned about the music being so fresh on the page, and the idea that she
would only have a short space of time to learn it “was filling me with dread”.
Fortunately, her husband, the counter-tenor Stephen Wallace, had sung in a number of
Hamilton’s works with Chamber Choir Ireland, and he told her, “actually, his work is
really good! It’ll be a good thing to do.”
And she was delighted with the collaborative, adaptive way that Hamilton worked with
her.
She also mentions the fact that everything was conceived for film, and singles out the
close-up of her face with which erth upon erth starts. It’s the only one of the operas I’ve
seen in a rough edit, and director Jo Mangan has it opening with an image that brings to
mind the famous shot of Buster Keaton’s eyelid at the start of Samuel Beckett’s Film in
Alan Schneider’s version of 1965.
For series director Hugh O’Conor – who is also an actor, writer and photographer – the
project was a first foray into opera, though he has done a number of music videos. He has
directed three of the operas himself, one of which is an animation. As the overseer, he
says, “I felt kind of like the mean dean in a John Hughes movie...You’ve got two-and-ahalf
hours to do this We’ve got to do two every day over our 10 days. So that’s maximum
10 shots. It’s going to take a maximum of 20 minutes per shot. And then you move on.
And everybody came back with more shots, saying we need this and we need that. And I
just said, No.”
His focus was firmly on creating short films rather than “filmed stage pieces”, and he
sings the praises of the way the members of the core group were able to work together –
himself, principal cameraman and editor Hugh Chaloner (if you’ve watched The Young
Offenders, you’ve seen his work), lighting designer Paul Keogan and designers Sarah
Bacon and Katie Davenport. At the end of the day, he says, his first foray into opera has
definitely left him with a taste for it.
No hesitation
Composer Conor Linehan had no hesitation when he was contacted about the project. His
first reaction was surprise, his second was delight. “I was surprised because I had had
only peripheral contact with INO. I said I know who I want to write this with, and I know
what I want to do.”
He talked to Louis Lovett, who wrote the libretto, telling him, “just do what you can in
the time available. You write it. I’ll score it. Just crack it on. We’ll have no selfcensorship
whatsoever. It was a process pretty much without difficulty.” There was no
exact specification, just a duration and a choice of two ensembles, strings with harp and
keyboard, or five strings, three brass, three woodwind, percussion and keyboard, “which I
thought sounded much more interesting”.

Elaine Kelly in rehearsal. Photograph: Pat Redmond
The outcome is “a six-and-a-half-minute opera in three acts, a tragicomedy concerning
the relationship between a dying woman and her rather callous consultant”. Anyone
who’s had “any ongoing things with the consultant class”, he says, “will enjoy it”.
Composer Éna Brennan, who has written “a lot for choral voices, but never for operatic
voices”, was “surprised and humbled” to be commissioned. As a musician she has had
“toes in so many different rivers”, but she had not imagined herself as registering within
the opera scene. Fergus Sheil had explored her work “and wanted to bring that diversity
to the palette of 20 composers. Which I was delighted about, especially in the year that’s
in it.”
INO provided a document which outlined “the whole project and their intent with it.
Fergus wanted for the composers to consider current events without anything being too
blatantly about the current events, either.”
She revisited an existing body of work called Rupture with minimal texts, which was
commissioned by the experimental vocal ensemble Tonnta. “A lot of the themes are
really abstract and existential with a lot of self-doubt. I thought if we need to hold up a
mirror to our time, all those themes are incredibly relevant now.”
Productions
Dancer and actor Stephanie Dufresne has worked in two INO productions, Gluck’s Orfeo
ed Euridice and Brian Irvine and Netia Jones’s Least Like the Other. She related to
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly’s Dust because “it’s almost folky. It’s contemporary music
but not standing and singing with a lot of vibrato. I really connected with the song. The
music was so moving.”

She describes the piece as “a lamentation for a lack of biodiversity”, a timeless idea that
she wanted to ground in the present. She wanted a moving tableau for the singer Michelle
O’Rourke, and changed the stage movers’ manadatory masks to full hazmat suits as a
high contrast to the romantic tableau. “At the end of the day,” she says, “I was directing a
video to support the music rather than vice versa.”
20 Shots of Opera is on www.irishnationalopera.ie from Thursday, December 17th
Elaine Kelly conducts Éna Brennan’s Rupture, Irene Buckley’s Ghost Apples, Linda
Buckley’s Glaoch (director Hugh O’Conor), Alex Dowling’s Her Name (director Hugh
O’Conor), Jenn Kirby’s Dichotomies of Lockdown, Emma O’Halloran’s The Wait,
Hannah Peel’s Close, Benedict Schlepper-Connolly’s Dust (director Stephanie Dufresne),
and Jennifer Walshe’s Libris Solar.
Series director Hugh O’Conor also directs Robert Coleman’s The Colour Green.
Conor Linehan’s The Patient Woman is directed by Muireann Ahern and Louis Lovett.
Sinéad Campbell Wallace is the sole character in Andrew Hamilton’s erth upon erth,
directed by Jo Mangan.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/get-a-musical-fix-with-20-shots-of-opera-1.4430942

OPERA TODAY
Opera Today – Claire Seymour
Interview with Fergus Sheil
20 Shots of Opera: Irish National Opera administer a creative
‘cure’
Claire Seymour
shot [noun]: an attempt to do or achieve something that you have not done before; an
attempt to do or achieve something that is difficult, when success is uncertain; a
photograph; a short piece in a film in which there is a single action or a short series of
actions; a small amount of a strong alcoholic drink; the amount of a drug that is put into
the body by a single injection; [idioms]: a shot in the dark, give it your best shot, like a
shot.
There are many reasons why Irish National Opera’s 20 Shots of Opera– an eclectic
collection of newly commissioned short works, in collaboration with the RTÉ Concert
Orchestra, and currently being broadcast free on the INO website – is both well-named
and hugely welcome. It may feel as if the arts were pretty much shot in 2020, by a
pandemic that we’d all like to be well shot of, but Artistic Director Fergus Sheil’s
ambitious creative project is a veritable shot in the arm for opera-lovers and the cultural
curious alike. (No more puns, I promise.)
Irish National Opera was formed two years ago, in January 2018, when Wide Open
Opera (which Fergus founded in 2012 with Gavin O’Sullivan, who is INO’s Head of
Production) merged with Opera Theatre Company to form the nation’s first ever truly
national opera company. In its first 24 months INO produced 72 performances of
fourteen operas in 24 Irish venues. But, we all know what happened next. The
pandemic scuppered planned projects but did not stifle Fergus’s innovative vision or
energy. When it became clear that a planned production of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus
dem Serail was not going to be possible, rather than put the production into storage,
Fergus decided to re-adapt it as an online mini-series of eight five-minute
episodes which were directed by Caitriona McLaughlin and filmed by the full cast
(headed by soprano Claudia Boyle) and chorus in their own homes, on their mobile
’phones. The Irish Chamber Orchestra under Peter Whelan provided the
accompaniment. The result is somewhat irreverent – a sort of Classical soap opera (in
both senses of the word) meets graphic novel hybrid – and has an air of
spontaneity. Things did develop and change as they went along, Fergus explains; if
they’d taken their time, it could quickly have become out of date, and so the company
pushed to tight time-lines to get the project completed.

Fergus Sheil
Fergus seems most frustrated and upset by the disruptions that the pandemic inflicted
on the company’s plans to stage the first production of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell in
Ireland since the 1870s. What does he find so special about this particular opera? “I
remember playing it as a student in the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland and when I
heard the section in the Prelude for scored for five solo cellos accompanied by double
basses, I thought it was overwhelmingly beautiful – like chocolate and velvet.” Fergus
points out that there are many works that are central to the opera repertory that have not
been heard in Irish theatres for decades. He rattles off what is presumably an oftlamented
list, including Pelléas and Mélisande (last staged in 1948) and Der
Rosenkavalier (1984); when he conducted Wide Open Opera’s inaugural production
of Tristan und Isolde at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre as part of the 2012 Dublin Theatre
Festival, it had been fifty years since Irish opera audiences had enjoyed Wagner’s
interpretation of the Celtic myth. Opera companies have to respond to their audiences,
but they have to lead as well, remarks Fergus. So, he hopes that the rescheduled
production of Guillaume Tell at the Gaiety Theatre in 2022 will have a strong impact on
Irish opera audiences.

In the meantime, 20 Shots has enabled Irish National Opera to make new work,
commissioned from twenty Irish composers, and performed by 28 singers (with one
singer appearing in two works), and to form new artistic relationships with many
composers and directors. A few of those composers approached were unavailable, but
Fergus was surprised how eager everyone was to step up to the challenge. Composers
were given few instructions or limitations, other than a very tight schedule. They were
allowed to choose their own subjects and texts, and were offered two alternative
instrumental groups of up to eleven musicians, one string-based and the other more
varied, comprising flute, clarinet, trumpet, horn, trombone, some strings and piano. The
finished products – in terms of both production values and performance standards – are
polished. After staged rehearsals with piano accompaniment, each Shot was then
recorded in the Gaiety Theatre over a period of just four days, with Fergus and Elaine
Kelly (a member of the company’s artistic development programme, ABL Aviation Opera
Studio), dividing the conducting duties. 162 people were involved in total, working in
carefully controlled small groups, with singers placed behind Perspex screens.
Fergus seems to have been phlegmatic about the prospect that not all twenty projects
might avoid a ‘Covid cancellation’: “We knew that if someone fell ill, we’d still have
eighteen or nineteen productions,” he says cheerfully. Travel restrictions, rather than
presenting yet another obstacle, proved a hidden blessing, for Fergus was able to
engage world-class Irish singers – such as Orla Boylan, Claudia Boyle, Sinéad
Campbell Wallace and Gavan Ring and rising newcomers such as Andrew Gavin and
Rachel Goode – who might at other times been scattered across international stages but
who in 2020 found themselves forced to stay closer to home.
Raphaela Mangan and Rachel Croash in Close (c) Ste Murray
The names of those who composed new work for 20 Shots of Opera form an impressive
roll call of Irish contemporary creative talent: Gerald Barry, Éna Brennan, Irene Buckley,
Linda Buckley, Robert Coleman, David Coonan, Alex Dowling, Peter Fahey, Michael

Gallen, Andrew Hamilton, Jenn Kirby, Conor Linehan, Conor Mitchell, Gráinne Mulvey,
Emma O’Halloran, Hannah Peel, Karen Power, Evangelia Rigaki, Benedict Schlepper-
Connolly and Jennifer Walshe.
Certain subjects recur. Inevitably some composers were drawn to the challenge of
capturing the experience of the present pandemic, when we are all very much living ‘in
the present’. Hannah Peel’s Close sets Stella Feehily’s dramatization of the first
meeting of Sam (soprano Rachel Croash) and Andi (mezzo-soprano Raphaela Mangan)
following their lockdown Zoom-romance, in a Shot directed by Sarah Baxter and
conducted by Kelly. The autumnal lilacs and oranges infuse a warmth into an encounter
which begins tentatively and grows into a ‘real’ and uplifting human connection, courtesy
of two pairs of non-latex, medium-sized gloves. In eight minutes, Close moves from
nervousness and vulnerability – a carefully measured ten-foot gap is a microcosm of the
absence and alienation of lockdown – to a cathartic quasi-consummation. Hope, fear,
surprise, conflict, relief and joy tumble after one another, as the folky minimalism of the
opening piano repetitions expands into a Technicolour celebration, the strings’ initial
pedal notes exploding into vibrant tremolos. There’s both humour – in the form of
musical mimicry of the repetitive scales of a neighbour’s beginner-violin practice, and an
anxiety attack brought on by the fear that a passion for John Wayne westerns might
signal a mania for a certain megaphonic MAGA proponent – and pathos.
Close is traditionally ‘staged’. In contrast, Andrew Hamilton’s Erthe Upon Erthe, which
sets an anonymous medieval text, throws the viewer-listener into an expressionist
nightmare, confronting them with an image-sound fusion of human fear and
exposure. We stare deep into a pair of wide-open, flickering, twitching eyes as a jungle
of sound assaults: a piercing vocal siren-scream, whistling shrieks, raucous trilling and
trumpet blares, percussive thumps and rolls. The high-pitched intensity mounts as the
white light brightens and blinds. When the eyes screw up self-protectively, we
emphasise: “Earth has gotten upon earth a dignity of naught.” As cacophony and
register subside, a face is revealed, and a more lyrical medium accompanies further
visual revelations: a medical gown, a morgue. Finally, the concordant warmth of a brass
chorale offers some assuagement, but the funereal rumbles and slides slip into silence,
leaving just a body on a trolley, alone, forgotten. Directed by Jo Mangan, Hamilton’s
response to a terrifying walk through a Covid Hot Zone in a Birmingham hospital in April
last year is disturbing, and it is powerfully performed by soprano Sinéad Campbell
Wallace.

Kelli-Ann Masterson in Ghost Apples
Environmental and scientific concerns crop up several times too. In Ghost Apples by
Irene Buckley (directed by Conor Hanratty), a scientist studies the Great Pacific
Garbage Patch, a 1.26 million square kilometre floating mass of discarded
plastic. Above relentless and abrasive string repetitions and percussive pulsing soprano
Kelli-Ann Masterson combines declamation and lyricism in an affecting narration of
ecological disaster made more eloquent by Jessica Traynor’s touching images: “Ghost
apples – leave behind its autumn’s shape held in winter’s glass”, “Skeletons of birds,
fleshed with twine and fishing line”, “A sea as sterile as a teardrop on a lab
slide.” Mankind’s imprint on the planet is toxic and indelible, she warns, “the data tells
us that on the oceans float two hundred and seventy thousand tonnes of wastes”, as the
pounding score propels us, and all on Earth, towards apocalypse: “Gannet, puffin,
albatross, the shape of all our loss.”
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly’s Dust is a quieter but no less haunting ballad of extinction.
“I have not seen … I have not heard … I have not held …” laments mezzo-soprano
Michelle O’Rourke, listing the victims of ecological ruin and evoking a moral and natural
wasteland. Stephanie Dufresne’s direction is poetic. Men in hazmat suits remove the
last emblems of biodiversity which surround the chaise longue upon which O’Rourke
sits, her wedding veil like a protective cage, until she too is divested of her Miss
Havisham-gown. Dust puts me in mind of Sam Taylor-Johnson’s evocative 2001 video
piece, Still Life, a visceral display of decay and death but one which has a bittersweet
beauty. From the ashes comes new life.

Michelle O’Rourke in Dust (c) Kip Carroll
Naturally, the 20 Shots are not all equally successful in meeting the challenges of the
brief. Some seem to me to tackle human issues too vast to be coherently grasped
within the brief canvas available; others are more or less imaginative in considering the
load-bearing role of image and sound within this medium; some engage less with the
‘dramatic’ aspect of opera. Gerald Barry’s Mrs Streicher, for example, sets letters that
Beethoven wrote to Nannette Streicher in which he bemoans his domestic situation,
beset as he is by laundry, food and servant crises. Tenor Gavan Ring delivers
Beethoven’s hyperbolic ranting with precisely focused, excoriating fury, punctuated by a
few gruff blasts from Stephen Irvine’s tuba, but with Ring’s Beethoven seated behind a
desk impotently flinging his excessive complaints directly at the camera, its more
paranoid monologue than ‘opera’.
Those Shots that seem to me to be most compelling are those that explore universal
human experiences and emotions through specific situations or narratives. Jo Mangan’s
direction of Evangelia Rigaki’s The Gift skilfully suggests the distance, literal and
figurative, between a dying father (actor Sean McGinley) and his estranged daughter
(mezzo-soprano Doreen Curran), a distance emphasised by the fierce bitterness of the
father’s spoken reminiscences and the declamatory purity of the daughter’s
reflections. The evolving musical language and textures marks the journey from
separation to reparation, a tolling bell foretelling loss but also bringing closure.

Sean McGinley in The Gift (c) Kip Carroll
In Her Name by Alex Dowling (and directed by Hugh O’Conor) a schoolboy at boardingschool
mourns the loss of his mother. In a drab school vestry, Seán Hayden tucks his
mobile ’phone into a pocket beneath his surplice, as the school Dean enquiries whether
he is okay, whether he’d like to talk. As if borne forward by the Pärt-like, shimmering
instrumental wave, the young boy walks towards the chapel where he sings each
evening, dragging and scouring his hand along white-washed brick corridor
walls. Bathed in angelic beams, his red robe patterned with stained glass reflections, he
sings, his voice climbing ever higher, the string chords tense and static as if, by sheer
force of will and glorious sound, the harmony can reverse loss: “And I bring her to mind
and I hold her there for as long as I can.” Mark O’Halloran simple, naturalistic text is as
unadorned, direct and raw as Dowling’s beautifully gentle melodic fragments: “I can’t say
her name, but I still ring her voicemail just to hear her answer.”
Fergus hopes that the very diversity of the Shots will make them appealing to new
audiences, showing them that “all these things are opera”, and thus develop the
audience for opera in Ireland more generally. Making new creative work offers the
company an opportunity to connect with audiences and Fergus explains that
contemporary opera draws a quite distinct audience, “different to that for Verdi, for
example”. Some of the Shots were commissioned and supported by individuals and
Fergus hopes that the whole project will have a what he describes as a “long tail”. There
are ambitions to show the Shots in cinemas, and at arts festivals, in the future. And, in
February Opera Vision will broadcast five Shots each week.
I wonder if Fergus imagines that some of the Shots will be further developed by their
creators into more extended projects. “Yes, certainly,” he concurs. As he speaks of his
ambitions for not just this project but for opera in Ireland more generally, his passion and

vision are infectious and persuasive. Irish National Opera, defined by its artistic choices
and identity, aims to develop the necessary infrastructure in Ireland, create new Irish
operas, involve Irish artists and practitioners, and build up knowledge and passion in
order that Irish talent can thrive.
We’re obviously at a crossroads moment, and Fergus acknowledges that it’s impossible
to make concrete plans for first six months of 2021. By the second half of the year, he
hopes to be back in theatres, performing live and presenting new work. Then, in
2022 Guillaume Tell will finally return to Ireland, and INO will also stage a co-production
of Carmen with Opera Philadelphia and Seattle Opera, directed by Paul Curran, one of
the company’s most ambitious ventures to date, and one which was also put on hold by
Covid.
And, if and when we reach a time when one no longer has to factor viruses and
lockdowns into seasonal planning, what next? Fergus doesn’t hesitate: “The Ring,
definitely.”
https://operatoday.com/2021/01/20-shots-of-opera-irish-national-opera-administer-a-creativecure/

The Irish Times – Dierdre Falvey
Interview with Elaine Kelly and Gavan Ring
Performers on 2020: ‘This year wasn’t difficult, it was a
wipe-out’
Elaine Kelly, Steve Wall, Sharon Shannon, Seán Millar and
others on a tough year for the arts
One of the reasons we’ll never forget 2020 is because we’ve relied on culture to
keep us going, while ironically, performance was for the most part frozen-inaction.
As audiences we’ve relied on screen and recordings and reading,
streaming and the very odd sliver of live performance. What has this year been
like for the performers who make it happen? We asked a few.

Conductor Elaine Kelly
Elaine Kelly
Conductor
This year has reaffirmed for me many of the things we take for granted, one of
which is the need we have for others. No more so than for me as a conductor. My
job revolves around actions and interactions with others and I have felt that loss
this year: of breathing, singing and playing together without barriers. There have
been too many disappointments and lost opportunities to count, yet I’m
incredibly thankful to be involved in many innovative projects led by Irish
National Opera. I can only hope the new year will allow us to get back in a room
together, making, appreciating and sharing music like never before.

Tenor Gavan Ring in Gerald Barry’s Mrs Streicher
Gavan Ring
Tenor
I have mixed feelings about 2020. The onset of Covid-19 in March was
devastating, with my first proper season as a tenor totally decimated; I was due to
make tenor débuts at Glyndebourne Festival Opera and La Monnaie in Brussels.
As they say in the business world, however, I pivoted. As a qualified primary
school teacher, I rejoined the Teaching Council. I invested in some high-spec
audio-visual equipment so I could both teach singing online and augment my
digital presence. I got involved with the Covid Care Concert Series, Gerald Barry
wrote a short opera for me which I recorded for Irish National Opera and I’ve
recorded recitals for festivals around the country. I’ve also consistently been at
home with my family, which has been truly wonderful.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/performers-on-2020-this-year-wasn-t-difficult-it-wasa-wipe-out-1.4429700

PREVIEWS
Print/Online

Sunday Business Post – Dick O’Riordan

Place de l’Opera – Jordi Kooiman
(Translated from Dutch)
IRISH OPERA SERVES 20 SHOTS OF OPERA
The Irish National Opera has produced twenty short operas after the
outbreak of the corona crisis. They were composed, recorded and
filmed in six months by more than 160 opera artists. The so-called 20
Shots of Opera can be seen online for free.
In the midst of the disastrous 2020 corona year, the Irish National Opera, a
company founded in 2018, decided to set a positive tone. With 20 Shots of
Opera , the artistic director Fergus Sheil wanted to focus the spotlights on
creativity in the opera sector. He put more than 160 opera artists to work to
create small-scale, short opera works, written for no more than two singers
and an orchestra of up to eleven musicians.

The immediate cause for the project was the cancellation of Guillaume
Tell . Rossini's opera was to be seen again in Dublin for the first time since
the end of the nineteenth century, but the production had to be canceled
due to the corona crisis. Fergus Sheil was looking for an alternative that
would be just as ambitious as Tell , but could also be implemented under
strict corona rules in terms of approach.
A large group of Irish composers were put to work to compose the
operas. Among them Gerald Barry, Robert Coleman and Jenn Kirby. Once
completed, the operas were recorded in collaboration with the RTE Concert
Orchestra and filmed at various locations in and around the Gaiety Theater
in Dublin.
The operas have very diverse themes, including rejection, grief, illness and
death. There are operas about, among other things, letters from Beethoven
about troublesome personnel, dating during the pandemic and the
meditations of a marine biologist.
The casts of the operas are mainly Irish or Irish based opera
singers. Among them Claudia Boyle, Gavan Ring, Andrew Gavin, Rachel
Goode and Emma Nash.
https://www.operamagazine.nl/nieuws/53979/ierse-opera-serveert-20-shots-of-opera/

Ôlyrix
(Translated from French)
20 doses of Opera against Covid-19 in Ireland
The 16/11/2020 By Ôlyrix
The National Opera of Ireland, re-confined before the others, announces innovative
artistic initiatives and reorganization:
The Republic of Ireland is the first country in the European Union to have
reconfigured itself (on October 21, 2020 for at least six weeks), thus fighting against
the second wave: going from 1284 positives recorded per day to 230, in a country
that mourns 1963 victims since the start of the epidemic (or 400 per million
inhabitants, compared to 640 / million in France, 732 in the USA, 141 in Germany).
Ireland has effectively imposed the closure of "non-essential shops", limiting
restaurants to take-out, restricting outings to a radius of 5 km, allowing business
travel only for essential workers, but leaving them open. schools and authorizing
"social bubbles" for isolated people suffering from mental disorders (authorized to
cross a single other family home, in the same way that two households can meet in
parks).
Unlike the first confinement, however, professional sports competitions are allowed
behind closed doors. But as usual and everywhere else, places of living culture
(where the rules are better respected than elsewhere) are closed.
The Irish National Opera, however, is not giving up and continues to reorganize its
activities. The company is certainly very young ( we announced its birth and its first
season in 2018 ), it has however already joined the OperaVision
program , contributed to the birth of World Opera Day , and offered 72 performances
of 14 opuses in 24 theaters of Ireland.
The lyric institution had anticipated restrictive measures for its first production of
the 2020/2021 season: Least Like The Other by Brian Irvine, a very digital show
which had even prepared a recorded orchestral accompaniment ( as in Geneva or

Zurich ), ready to be broadcast in surround sound and even "manipulated in real
time". The series of performances scheduled for September 25 to October 6 were
however finally canceled (following the passage of Ireland to level 3 of health
measures).
The Celtic tiger, far from giving up, launches a new great creative project: while the
world awaits the millions of doses of vaccine, the Irish National Opera will offer 20
Shots of Opera , a collection of short lyrical creations composed by 20 artists. Irish,
for one or two lyric soloists and a chamber orchestra (up to 11 instruments). 20
Shots of Opera will be filmed at various locations within the Gaiety Theater in Dublin
and streamed online for free from 17 December. A project that resembles the Sis
Solos Soles du Liceu , which Ôlyrix will report on and also broadcast. In Ireland,
Catalonia, as recently in Finland with Covid fan tutte, the projects favor national
artists in this period of restricted travel.
The Irish National Opera thus explains how this crisis is also an opportunity to
honor local talents, to further strengthen for the future the adaptability of the
artistic production process and the interest in contemporary creations. . The house
says it is ready to adapt the rest of its programming announced for 2020/2021
(which has already enabled it to re-engage artists planned on previously canceled
productions).
Appointment is therefore given in December for a Mozart concert , then The Four
Note Opera by Tom Johnson at the end of January, La Bohème by Puccini in
February-March,Bajazet by Vivaldi with the Royal Opera House in April-May, Alice's
Adventures Under Ground by Gerald Barry ( our review in London ) in May and then
in June the world premiere A Thing I Cannot Name by Amanda Feery.
https://www.olyrix.com/articles/actu-des-operas/4450/20-doses-dopera-contre-le-covid-
19-en-irlande-article-musique-lyrique-classique-culture-confinement-covid-19

RADIO

BBC Radio 3 – In Tune
Interview with Fergus Sheil
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000q859

RTÉ Radio 1 – Sunday with Miriam O’Callaghan
Interview with Emma and Mark O’Halloran
https://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/share/radio1/21888414

RTÉ Radio 1 – Arena
Interview with Hugh O’Connor & Éna Brennan
https://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/share/radio1/21884655

RnaG - An Cúinne Dána
Interview with Gemma Ni Bhriain
https://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/share/rnag/11262454

Bayerischer Rundfunk/Deutschlandfunk
Interview with Linda Buckley, Jennifer Walsh, Hannah Peel & Fergus Sheil
https://www.dropbox.com/s/weqq2ij7g10tbr7/20%20Shots%20of%20opera%20-
%20Kurzopernmarathon%20der%20Irischen%20Nationaloper.MP3?dl=0

RTÉ CULTURE ONLINE

20 Shots Of Opera - inside the INO's short opera
showcase – Fergus Sheil
Updated / Monday, 1 Feb 2021 15:00
Fergus Sheil of Irish National Opera writes for Culture about their acclaimed 20
Shots of Opera project, which features 20 new compact operas from composers in
Ireland.
In a year of challenges and upheaval, Irish National Opera's 20 Shots of
Opera series turns a spotlight on creativity and makes 2020 a year to remember for
positive reasons. Conceived, composed, rehearsed, recorded, filmed and edited in
just six months, these 20 short operas showcase the breadth and depth of Irish
operatic talent.
Each opera is short – between five and eight minutes in duration – so each must get
straight to the point. They are concentrated and intense – like a shot of espresso –
which led to the title of the project.
Over 160 opera professionals from all corners of the art form contributed to 20 Shots
of Opera: composers, writers, conductors, directors, designers, animators, singers,
actors, orchestral musicians, audio, visual and technical experts. The project allowed
us to deepen our relationship with many well-loved artists as well as forging new
creative partnerships.

The Wait by Emma O'Halloran
Twenty composers were given free rein to choose a topic that interested them and to
find text either by commissioning something new or be adapting an existing work.
Most of the composers had no previous relationship with Irish National Opera,
several were approaching opera for the first time.
A Message For Marty by Conor Mitchell
Each composer/writer team was partnered with a cast and director, as well as
working with the broader design and film teams who worked across all 20 operas.

The operas largely have one or two cast members. In a period of lockdown, Irish
National Opera was fortunate to have access to many of Ireland’s great singers that
have previously performed with us; Orla Boylan, Claudia Boyle, Gavan Ring, Imelda
Drumm, Naomi Lousia O’Connell, as well as showcasing artists new to the company;
Anne Marie Gibbons, Sinéad Campbell-Wallace, Mairead Buicke and Michelle
O’Rourke as well as giving a platform to young emerging artists.
Each opera was rehearsed in clinical conditions in a large studio with singers in
masks at all times. The musical score was recorded in the Gaiety Theatre where the
singers unmasked within the confines of Perspex screens. Later during filming, the
cast did not need to fully sing, and cameras were kept at a safe distance. Social
distancing, sanitization and ventilation were key throughout.
The Gift by Evangelia Rigaki
Making opera for film is different from planning a production for the stage. Everybody
involved in 20 Shots of Opera rose to the challenge of thinking differently about how
we work. The creative teams were free to do things that are not normally possible –
extreme facial close-ups in Andrew Hamilton’s erth upon erth, gravity-defying action
in Evangalia Rigaki and Marina Carr’s The Gift, or the portrayal of two sides of the
same personality in Éna Brennan’s Rupture.
This is opera at its most vibrant, with something to say on a huge range of topics;
finding human connection, dealing with rejection, grief, illness and death, coping with
psychological challenges, protecting the environment, living off-grid, pandemic
dating, wetsuits, latex gloves, super-spreaders, Beethoven’s laundry, microbiology
and doughnuts.

Libris Solar by Jennifer Walshe
Creating these 20 operas has been a voyage of discovery and joy for all involved.
We hope you enjoy watching them. There is no correct order. Jump in anywhere and
try it out. Then keep exploring!
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0106/1188061-20-shots-of-opera-inside-the-inos-short-operashowcase/

20 Shots of Opera features
From 5 – 22 Jan 2020 RTÉ Culture posted individual features on all 20 operas. The full list is
detailed below
https://www.rte.ie/culture/20-shots-of-opera/

Glaoch by Linda Buckley
The Wait by Emma O'Halloran
The Patient Woman by Conor
Linehan
Ghost Apples by Irene Buckley
Mrs. Streicher by Gerald Barry
Rupture by Ena Brennan
Verballing by David Coonan
Her Name by Alex Dowling
Through and Through by Peter
Fahey
The Colour Green Robert Coleman
erth upon erth by Andrew Hamilton
Dichotomies of Lockdown by Jenn
Kirby
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0104/1187573-20-shotsof-opera-glaoch-by-linda-buckley/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0104/1187584-20-shotsof-opera-the-wait-by-emma-ohalloran/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0105/1187756-20-shotsof-opera-the-patient-woman-by-conor-linehan/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0106/1188062-20-shotsof-opera-ghost-apples-by-irene-buckley/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0108/1188236-20-shotsof-opera-mrs-streicher-by-gerald-barry/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188295-20-shotsof-opera-ena-brennan/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188305-20-shotsof-opera-verballing-by-david-coonan/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188312-20-shotsof-opera-her-name-by-alex-dowling/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188316-20-shotsof-opera-through-and-through-by-peter-fahey/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188301-20-shotsof-opera-the-colour-green/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188321-20-shotsof-opera-erth-upon-erth-by-andrew-hamilton/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188322-20-shotsof-opera-dichotomies-of-lockdown-by-jenn-kirby/

Touch by Karen Power
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188331-20-shotsof-opera-touch-by-karen-power/
Dust by Benedict Schlepper-
Connolly
Libris Solar by Jennifer Walshe.
At a Loss by Michael Gallen
La Corbiere by Grainne Mulvey
Close by Hannah Peel
The Gift by Evangelia Rigaki
A Message for Marty by Conor
Mitchell
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188337-20-shotsof-opera-dust-by-benedict-schlepper-connolly/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188338-20-shotsof-opera-libris-solar-by-jennifer-walshe/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188318-20-shotsof-opera-at-a-loss-by-michael-gallen/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188325-20-shotsof-opera-la-corbiere-by-grainne-mulvey/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188328-20-shotsof-opera-close-by-hannah-peel/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188334-20-shotsof-opera-the-gift-by-evangelia-rigaki/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2021/0107/1188323-20-shotsof-opera-a-message-for-marty-by-conor-mitchell/

PRESS BOOK
REVIEWS

Wall Street Journal – Heidi Waleson
Satisfying, Bite-Sized Operas
Short pieces from 20 Irish composers, a serial space opera and a
trio of works inspired by famous diaries
With opera gone digital due to the Covid-19 pandemic, fans can experience
voices, composers and opera companies they might never otherwise have heard.
The Irish National Opera commissioned short (five- to eight-minute) pieces from
20 Irish composers. Recorded in Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre with the RTÉ Concert
Orchestra and filmed in a lively variety of styles, the resulting “20 Shots of
Opera”, available free, is an exhilarating jaunt through up-to-the-minute lyric
creativity. Unlike the experience of losing yourself in the lengthy grandeur of

more traditional operas, you absorb these intimate quick takes like jolts of
recognition.
In the opening comedy, “Mrs. Streicher” by Gerald Barry, the best-known of the
composers, a tenor sits at a table ranting furiously about servants and laundry,
with interjections from a tuba. The text is from Beethoven’s letters. Several
pieces explore separation: In Éna Brennan’s “Rupture,” a soprano duels with her
inner, critical voice; in Hannah Peel’s “Close,” two women have an awkward first
in-person, socially distanced date. One powerful group of works looks at death:
In Alex Dowling’s “Her Name,” a sweet-voiced choirboy mourns his mother;
Michael Gallen’s “At a Loss” is a large-scale diva turn, as the soprano awaits news
of her mother’s death; Andrew Hamilton’s “Erth Upon Erth” is a wordless howl,
starting with a woman’s mouth in close-up and ending with her zipped into a
body bag on a gurney.
Operas made just for film can inspire highly creative visuals. “Verballing” by
David Coonan employs black-and-white animation. A female police officer,
getting schooled in how to question a murder suspect, sings just one word—
“Yeah,” repeated higher and higher. The instructions appear only in type, and as
the tension mounts, the background dissolves so that her white face floats in a
sea of darkness. In the hilarious “A Message for Marty (or `The Ring’)” by Conor
Mitchell, two sisters call out an ex (who dumped one of them by text); the jittery
cellphone picture, the tacky costumes, and the escalating fury, plus a snippet of
Wagner, is opera extremism in modern dress.
Most of the pieces are for women’s voices, exploring different timbres and
expressivity. I was struck by the fierce intensity of mezzo Naomi Louisa
O’Connell in Emma O’Halloran’s “The Wait,” and the simple, folk-like cadences of
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly’s “Dust,” a lament for the natural world, poignantly
sung by Michelle O’Rourke. And the insidiously floating and twisting soprano line
of “Libris Solar,” sung by Claudia Boyle, made me want to hear something longer
from composer Jennifer Walshe.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/satisfying-bite-sized-operas-11609184559

The Times – Simon Thomson
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/twenty-shots-of-opera-review-a-good-idea-let-downby-abstract-scenarios-and-music-dkwjfbsgq

The Guardian & Observer – Fiona Maddock
Of the moment, full of character and rich in variety, these short filmed operas
by 20 irish composers and top performers are exemplary lockdown musicmaking
I’m so over Zoom… a personal best in the parkrun… cinnamon buns… two metre
distance… Not my words, but a demonstration of how opera can mirror the zeitgeist
as readily, and sharply, as any art form. Each of these random phrases is from Irish

National Opera’s 20 Shots of Opera: short new filmed works by different composers
(10 men, 10 women) for one or two singers and musicians from the RTÉ Concert
Orchestra.
Whether it’s Gerald Barry’s crazed music for tenor and tuba, setting a letter by
Beethoven about his laundry, or Hannah Peel’s duetting strangers on the nightmare
of dating in a pandemic, these works are as vigorous as anything offered by
lockdown. Each piece lasts around six minutes, conceived in an array of styles.
Conor Mitchell’s A Message for Marty, musically dense and comic, features two
angry Belfast women – kohl eyes, candy-coloured acrylic talons – plotting against the
creep who dumped one of them by text. In Dust, with ballad-like music and words by
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, a woman dressed in pink tulle gradually sheds the
exquisite layers, symbolising the death of biodiversity.
Covid-19 recurs like a grim rondo theme: a mother, unreachable in her last
moments; a bereft, dying father. One of the most simple and affecting pieces is Her
Name, music by Alex Dowling, words by Mark O’Halloran: a young chorister, away at
boarding school, secretly mourns his dead mother. Strings and synthesiser revisit a
world of ancient polyphony, poignant and elegiac.
The Dublin-based company, only two years old this month, works with composers
and performers from across Ireland. The music itself, predominantly tonal and
lyrical, is full of variety and character. In these small sound worlds, mostly of strings
and percussion, the use of harp is especially vivid. Every one of the “shots” hits
home. James Joyce might well have called them epiphanies.
Graphics, smartphones, video and clever lighting all feed into the mix, with different
directors for each show – most of them filmed at Dublin’s Gaiety theatre. The energy
required, and the long list of production credits, suggests this project was even
harder work than a traditional operatic production, and well worth it. It’s also an
exceedingly slick and handsome online enterprise in itself. Hugh O’Conor was series
director, with Fergus Sheil (INO’s founding artistic director) and Elaine Kelly as
conductors. The excellent singers include Claudia Boyle, Orlan Boylan, Gavan Ring
and Andrew Gavin. Every composer deserves praise.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jan/23/20-shots-of-opera-irish-national-operareview

Opera Magazine – Nick Kimberley

The Stage – Steph Power
Wonderfully diverse operas
★★★★★
Claudia Boyle in Libris Solar, part of Irish National Opera's 20 Shots of Opera
20 Shots of Opera brilliantly reframes opera in the age of Covid
When Covid halted Irish National Opera’s live programme, the company devised an entirely new,
equally ambitious free-to-view online project. The resulting 20 Shots of Opera is not just an inspiring
response to the crisis, but delves deep into opera itself, exploring its myriad possibilities for creative
expression.
Twenty Irish composers have written new operas between five and eight minutes long for one or two
singers and up to 11 members of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, conducted by artistic director
Fergus Sheil and Elaine Kelly.

From emerging to established composers, the 10 men and 10 women - including Gerald Barry and
Jennifer Walshe - have been given equal billing. All were invited to look at current events but not
necessarily directly, yielding a set of wonderfully diverse yet topically related operas in a wide range
of styles, encompassing a gamut of human states and emotions.
Each piece is a film or ‘shot’ opera: that is, the film element is intrinsic to the work. And each is
brilliantly executed, with superb singer-actors including Gavan Ring and Orla Boylan, and high
production values throughout under an array of directors including Jo Mangan, Caitriona McLaughlin
and series director Hugh O’Conor.
Barry’s drily witty, Beethoven-inspired Mrs Streicher and Walshe’s surreal science-fantasy Libris Solar
- both Beckettian in setting and intensity - are just two of many highlights. Others
include Éna Brennan’s Rupture and Linda Buckley’s Glaoch, exploring inner and social fracture. While
relationships, technology and environmental crisis are major themes of the set, Andrew Hamilton
tackles Covid head-on in the terrifying Erthe Upon Erthe.
REVIEWS DEC 18, 2020 ONLINE
https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/20-shots-of-opera

Opera Wire – Alan Neilson
Innovative and imaginative
With the closure of the theatres, opera companies have turned to streaming their
productions. However, with all the goodwill in the world, they tend to fall into the
category of second-hand, second-rate experiences.
In fact, many would argue that watching an opera on the screen in the comfort of
your own home does not work at all. After all, the overwhelming majority of operas
were never conceived by their creators to be presented via this medium, and by
simply transferring it from the stage to the screen much is lost, and little, if anything,
is gained.
Forget for the moment the distractions which are almost certain to occur while
watching in your own living room, or that opera should be a communal experience,
one shared with other audience members, in which there is direct communication
between performers and the listeners, or that the presence of a live audience often
generates an energetic frisson that is otherwise rarely obtained: the problems run
much deeper.
Theatres work because each audience member is able to freely engage with the
work; they can train their eye on aspects that interest them, allowing their
imaginations to wander over incidents, symbolic references, scenic decisions, and
so on. This is something that is severely curtailed in a screened performance, in
which it is the film director via the camera who decides for everyone what is
important, what to focus on, and what to ignore. The imagination is thereby stifled
and a fundamental element of the experience is destroyed.
The problem lies in the fact that staged performances are designed for the theatre
and to satisfy a theatre audience, whether or not the audience is actually present.
How much more satisfying it would be if streamed performances were written for
the medium on which they will be viewed, namely a screen, in which the creation of
the video itself becomes part of the art form, allowing it to benefit from all the

advantages of video technology while not being hamstrung by the drawbacks of
streaming a work made for a different medium?
This is exactly what Irish National Opera has attempted to do with its innovative and
imaginative “20 Shots of Opera:” 20 newly commissioned short operas from 20
different composers and librettists, lasting around five to ten minutes, specifically
for the purpose of streaming.
Although a diverse range of subjects was chosen for the works, ranging from the
loss of a loved one to the setting to music of Beethoven’s letters about his domestic
affairs, a strong theme which emerges is a focus on the problems which are
currently besetting our world and the atomizing effects they have on the human
condition. The ability to connect with ourselves, with each other, and with the
planet all come in for examination: the COVID-19 pandemic, new technologies, and
environmental destructions are at the forefront, but the resulting psychological
problems of living in a dysfunctional society are also included. They are not,
however, presented in a uniformly bleak or angst-ridden manner; comedy also plays
its part.
With 20 operas on offer, composed in an assortment of styles, using different forms
and an equally diverse range of libretti and presented using a variety of video and
directorial techniques, it is safe to say that there is something to please, as well as
to displease, everyone.
“Mrs. Streicher”
The first of the 20 on the list is Gerald Barry’s “Mrs. Streicher” written for voice and
tuba, with Barry himself acting as the director. Nanette Streicher was a surrogate
mother figure to Beethoven while he was living in Vienna, to whom he used to write
letters. In these missives he would work himself up into rages with complaints about
domestic issues, such as his servants and his laundry, even comparing his problems
to Christ’s suffering in Gologotha.
The imaginative, even amusing idea of setting Beethoven’s letters to music is
certainly a promising one but unfortunately proves to be somewhat disappointing,
as the work fails to ignite the interest. Although the sure hand of the composer is
clearly evident in the way he captures Beethoven’s irascible character in the vocal
line, and the tenor Gavan Ring produces a well-delivered performance, there is little
else on offer.

The only instrumental accompaniment was that of the tuba, which occasionally
interjects with rude notes to separate the letters, which adds a slight touch of
humor.
Barry’s direction is static and unimaginative: Beethoven sits behind a desk, in the
dark with the tuba player in the background. The camera remains fixed on
Beethoven without any movement.
Dealing with Death
Three works focused on the recent loss or impending death of a loved one: “At a
Loss” by Michael Gallen, who was also responsible for the text and direction,
conducted by Fergus Sheil; “The Gift” by Evangelia Rigaki to a text by Marina Carr,
directed by Jo Mangan and conducted by Fergus Sheil; “Her Name” by Alex
Dowling to a text by Mark O’Halloran, directed by Hugh O’Connor and conducted
by Elaine Kelly.
In Gallen’s “At a Loss” a woman reflects upon the force which gives life to the body
as she waits for her mother to die. Soprano Orla Boylan produces a sensitive
performance in the role, presenting a multi-layered portrayal in which she captures
the aching pain of her forthcoming loss, mixed with reflections on how the forces of
life and electricity share similar characteristics. Gallen allows the voice to dominate,
with the largely understated orchestral accompaniment used to build the
atmospheric context, alongside the darkly constructed set, lit by lone standing
electric light bulbs. It is a powerful piece in which all the creative elements
successfully combine.
“The Gift” is an exceptional work, but painful to watch: it is possibly too close to
reality. An estranged daughter played by mezzo-soprano Doreen Curran is returning
home to see her dying father, played by the actor Sean McGinley. We are privy to
their innermost thoughts, we hear of the deep resentments she holds towards him,
and his pain at being rejected. There is a lot of anger present on both sides, and
Carrs’ text pulls no punches.
Likewise, Rigaki is uncompromising with her disturbing musical accompaniment of
violin and cello. Now the daughter will return for one last meeting; the father
desperate to say goodbye to the daughter he loves. But she arrives too late,
although alive he has lost consciousness. The music calms as she reflects upon her
father, and the funeral bell tolls. Curran’s performance in the role is superb,
portraying the daughter as a hard, self-righteous woman, secure in her Roman

Catholic faith. Looking upon her dying father’s body she can only see him in terms
of a saint, a religious symbol, yet there is a subtle softening in the face which
suggests there is real pain concealed below the surface.
The video has been beautifully constructed, full of poignant moments that capture
the depth and complexity of the feelings they have towards each other, as well as
the physical and emotional distance that separated them. The father appealing to
the violin and cello players is a particularly telling moment, as is the constant
reference to religious imagery. It is a work that demands to be watched again and
again.
The most delicately drawn of the three is “Her Name,” which focuses on a child, on
the verge of adolescence, mourning the loss of his mother. Sent away to boarding
school, he is left alone to deal with his grief as best he can. Unable to speak about
her, he finds solace in the chapel and in listening to his mother’s voice on voicemail.
The boy soprano Sean Hayden produces a beautiful performance in which he
intones the words clearly, in a matter-of-fact manner, but tinged with a hollow, inner
sadness. Dowling’s score is sensitively wrought, catching the child’s desperate
situation, the music mournful yet equally unsettling.
Environmental Issues
Two works took the forthcoming environmental apocalypse as its theme: “Ghost
Apples” by Irene Buckley to a text by Jessica Traynor, directed by Conor Hanratty
and conducted by Elaine Kelly; “Dust” by Benedict Sclepper-Connolly, directed by
Stephanie Dufresne, and conducted by Elaine Kelly.
In “Ghost Apples” soprano Kelli-Ann Masterson, essaying the role of a scientist,
living in the not too distant future, takes us on a short tour of what we have
destroyed. On a walk through her laboratory, we view skeletons of Gannets and
Albatrosses, piles of fishing twine found in their stomaches, which caused them to
starve to death. She tells us of the plastic, of the bottles and boxes which killed the
oceans, of the forest which were burnt to the ground, and reflects upon the time
when apples used to ripen on the branch, and she searches desperately for
evidence of beauty in the mounds of plastic.
Masterson’s clear, monochromatic voice gives her words the disinterested honesty
of a scientist, but it is her phrasing, rendered with sufficient emotional force, and her
piercingly bright top notes which expose her underlying despair and anguish of

what this truth means. Buckley’s music is thinly scored, unsettling and changeable,
including oases of relative calm, but the momentum is always forward, driving us
towards an inevitable and disastrous conclusion.
Mezzo-soprano Michelle O’Rourke sings a beautiful folk ballad called “Dust” about
the destructions of species, while two men in Hazmat suits remove all the plants
from a stage and reclothe her in one. It certainly pushes at the limits of what
constitutes an opera, as do many of the other works in this collection.
However, whereas they tend to innovate and experiment, this is really little more
than a video of a folk song, notwithstanding its interesting musical introduction, like
so many others produced in the past. The song and the video are, nevertheless,
very enjoyable.
Modern Communication Technology
Two works looked at the uses and abuses of modern communication devices:
“Glaoch” by Linda Buckley to a text by Doireann Ni Ghriofa, directed by Hugh
O’Connor and conducted by Elaine Kelly; “A Message for Matty (The Ring)” by
Conor Mitchell, directed by Davey Kelleher and conducted by Fergus Sheil
These days there are so many technologies through which we can communicate, yet
we are finding it more difficult to stay connected. Buckley and Ni Ghriofa’s
“Glaoch” is their take on this modern phenomenon. We watch as soprano Sarah
Shine and mezzo-soprano Gemma Ni Bhriain try to hold onto their connection via
FaceTime, selfies, computers, video messages, and so on, but it all turns into a
lament; they cannot touch or feel each other’s words, even the telephone cord
which connected them has gone. The relationship weakens until it finally breaks.
The orchestral sounds are initially strained, but following a period of relative calm, it
moves into the final section which is loud and overpowering, so that the
communication between the two women becomes increasingly difficult to
understand, capturing not just their path towards disconnection, but also their
emotional journey. It is a nicely crafted piece, in which Kelleher’s direction
convinced.
Conor Mitchell’s “A Message to Marty (or The Ring)” was an amusing take on the
current fashion of trying to shame people on social media. Seen through the lens of
a mobile phone camera we watch how two girls work themselves up into a selfrighteous
frenzy after one of them has been dumped by her partner.

The girls played by soprano Emma Nash and mezzo-soprano Carolyn Dobbin
screech and rage to the point of hysteria, producing a truly believable reaction to
their perceived insult. Katie Davenport’s costume designs were suitably brash and
over the top, but not at all unrealistic, and added to the humor. Kelleher’s direction
again impresses and captures the emotions and energy perfectly.
Animation
Two operas were animated presentations: “The Colour Green” by Robert Coleman
to a text by Mark Boyle, directed by Hugh O’Connor, animated by Holly Keating
and conducted by Fergus Sheil; “Verballing” by David Coonan to a text by Dylan
Coburn Gray, directed by Caitriona McLaughlin, animated by Patrick Moynihan and
conducted by Fergus Sheil.
Both composers took an experimental approach to many aspects of their works. In
“The Colour Green” spoken phrases are repeated again and again over
disembodied notes or short musical phrases. The bass-baritone David Howes
added occasional sung phrases about sleep, as well as a humming sound which is
overlaid on to the spoken words. It is an interesting piece, which has a slightly
hypnotic effect after repeated listenings.
“Troubling” is a well-constructed and imaginative work, in which Coonan and
Coburn explore the difference between reporting the truth and answering without
lying. Against a disturbing dissonant musical background, a Garda is questioned
about a murder investigation and coached in how to present her answers. Soprano
Amy Ni Fhearraigh provides the voice of the Garda, which comprises of
monosyllabic utterances, normally “Yeah,” and a continuous nonverbal moaning
sound, which she intones with different levels of stress to reflect her level of anxiety.
The major part of the dialogue is in the form of a text which deliberately speeds up
to create further confusion and ambiguity. It is a fine example of how video can be
used to alter the form of opera in order to make it more accessible when viewed via
a screen.
“The Wait”
“The Wait” by Emma O’Halloran and Mark O’Halloran is a real gem. It is a
provocative work that grips the imagination; it is mysterious, it is frightening, it is
atmospheric, everything is clearly told, yet we know so little.

A black horse is tied up in a neighbor’s yard as the floodwaters rise. A woman
watches from an upstairs window as the horse thrashes around in the foaming
waters before it drowns. Now she must wait as the water keeps rising to see if she
will survive.
Mark O’Halloran’s dark text is concise and expertly crafted, for which Emma
O’Halloran’s wonderfully evocative score, with its contrasting densities and textures,
dark coloring, silences, repetitive rhythms which become more incessant as the
water rises, complements so well. The woman who waits by the window is played by
mezzo-soprano Naomi Louisa O’Connell. A splendid singing actress, she captures
the essence of the character perfectly, her fear, her apprehension and her anxiety;
every word, every phrase is given its full weight, every facial feature and body
movement reflects her innermost feeling.
The director Michael Barker-Caven opted for a minimalist setting so that only
camera angles, dark-colored lighting, water, and a strap to bind the woman’s arms
are used to support O’Connell’s performance. With her exceptional ability to carry a
role, it proved to be the right decision.
Having watched it a number of times, the thought that came to mind was that this
piece would make an excellent part of a song cycle.
Psychological Dysfunction
Three works dealt with psychological states of the human condition: “Rupture” by
Éna Brennan, directed by Jo Mangan and conducted by Elaine Kelly; “Touch” by
Karen Power to a text by Ione, directed by Jo Mangan and conducted by Fergus
Sheil; “La Corbière” by Grainne Mulvey to a text by Anne Le Marquand Hartigan,
directed by Jo Mangan and conducted by Fergus Sheil.
An unhealthy way of thinking can cause serious anxiety and/or behavioral problems,
and all three operas consider this problem, but from very different angles.
Brennan’s “Rupture” explores how a personality can become fractured by societal
pressures.
A woman, played by soprano Rachel Goode, muses on the good things in her life
but is subjected to negative thoughts and doubts, which are given a voice by
mezzo-soprano Sarah Richmond. We watch the woman’s image start to fragment
into two distinct images as the negative self starts to take form. It is a powerful
metaphor which a video can present in a way that is beyond the means of a staged

production. Goode’s voice is nicely suited to the bright fresh positive side of the
self. Richmond’s voice being lower and darker creates an excellent contrast,
especially when the two voice combine.
Brennan’s music begins serenely, gently cradling the voice, but becomes more
distant, less supportive as the personality fragments. At the end, order is restored,
but although the woman has returned to a balanced state, we are still able to see
the second face. This is a work that successfully marries video with opera in an
innovative, effective way.
In Power’s work, “Touch,” a man and a woman, played by baritone Gyula Nagy and
mezzo-soprano Naomi Louisa O’Connell, are trapped in a mental prison of their
own making; they are isolated, alone, unable to connect with the world and people
about them. The pair are enclosed in two separate spaces, and we see them
interacting with the images and sounds around them, to which they react with
mainly non-verbal animal-like sounds. There are five words, however, which show
them a pathway out of the nightmare, but they must listen.
Power’s music comprises isolated distinct sounds overlaid with noises from the
natural world. The effect, when combined with the vocal sounds is to create an
evocative and interesting sound-world, one which is surprisingly accessible and easy
to engage with, one which is suggestive of primordial or prehistoric communication,
and breaks through the artifice of the modern world.
“La Corbière” is a tense and disturbing work. It focuses on fear, specifically the fear
of the other and of the unknown and the paralyzing effects which it can exert. Two
sex workers, played by soprano Mairead Buicke and mezzo-soprano Anne Marie
Gibbons, search for each other on board a ship that is enveloped in fog. The boat is
careering towards the rocks and panic sets in; they can’t find each other, one cannot
swim and the panic increases; they cannot find the lifeboats and the panic rises
further. Men’s voices are heard among the fog. They cannot find safety. They are
desperate.
Mulvey’s score is unrelenting, the tension and sense of anxiety are continually
ramped up, the sound is discordant, angular, and anxious, playing to the sense of
claustrophobia captured in the video. Buicke and Gibbons sing at the edge, their
voices full of fear, desperation, and stress. It is not an easy piece to listen to, but it is
dramatically effective.

COVID-19
Three works tackled the current pandemic: “Erthe Upon Erthe” by Andrew Hamilton
using the text of a mediaeval English poem, directed by Jo Mangan and conducted
by Fergus Sheil; “Dichotomies of Lockdown” by Jenn Kirby, directed by Aoife
Spillane-Hinks and conducted by Elaine Kelly; “Close” by Hannah Peel to a text by
Stella Feehily, directed by Sarah Baxter and conducted by Elaine Kelly. Each took
very different approaches.
“Erthe Upon Erthe” was a truly harrowing piece set in the COVID ward of a hospital.
The unrelenting pain and suffering were perfectly expressed in Hamilton’s
uncompromising and disturbing score. Soprano Sinéad Campbell-Wallace
produced an equally unsettling and painful vocal picture, with the camera lens
constantly focused on her face, highlighting clearly the fear, anguish, and
incomprehension in her eyes. Only towards the end does the music calm as death
releases her from her suffering.
Despite having a truly off-putting title, “Dichotomies of Lockdown” is an expertly
crafted work, which manages to successfully cram so much into seven short scenes.
A window is opened onto the lives of two ordinary people, played by mezzosoprano
Aebh kelly and tenor Andrew Gavin, during the lockdown. We follow their
obsessive, banal, and strange behavior as they react to the pressures of lockdown. It
is at times funny, sometimes depressing, occasionally bizarre, all the more so for the
fact that we can recognize in them aspects of our own behavior.
It was well-presented by Spillane-Hinks who, aided by designer Katie Davenport,
had the couple act out the scenes in a simple set comprising a white table and two
chairs in a bright white room, hinting at the confines of a cell in a mental institution.
Kirby’s music changes with the scenes, sometimes calm, sometimes repetitive and
obsessive, occasionally playful, but always accessible. Kelly and Gavin both give
commendable performances, endowing the two characters with strong
personalities.
Peel and Freehily’s “Close” may prove to be of interest to those with a sentimental
outlook. A simple tale of a couple who overcome the COVID restrictions to find
love, set against a lilac-pink colored sky, with autumn leaves littering the stage.
Peel’s music is suitably slushy, although not unattractive, while Freehily’s text is
littered with clichés and right-on views. Soprano Rachel Croash and mezzo Raphaela
Mangan play the starry-eyed couple, putting in good performances.

Two Tales
Two of the works set stories to music: “Through and Through” by Peter Fahey,
directed by Anabelle Comyn and conducted by Fergus Sheil; “The Patient Woman”
by Conor Linehan to a text by Louis Lovett, directed by Muireann Ahern and Louis
Lovett, and conducted by Fergus Sheil
“Through and Through” is constructed in three scenes. It tells the tale of a woman
who murders her lover, is taunted by a bird for what she has done and is then
hanged, although it is not presented in a neat linear order.
Soprano Daire Halpin produces a strong and energetic performance as the woman,
as she whispers, speaks, employs sprechstimme, makes heavy breathing sounds and
whistles her way through the role, although using little in the way of what you would
call traditional singing. She also utters the words of the bird and of her lover in the
first person. The orchestra produces a disjointed collection of sounds to reflect the
woman’s mental and emotional state. It is, in other words, an experimental work in
which the viewer is expected to do a fair amount of work if they wish to gain a full
understanding.
Linehan and Lovett’s “The Patient Woman” is tragicomedy in three acts. Set in the
mid-20 th century, it tells the story of a woman who is just too much trouble for her
doctor to care about, and she knows it.
Although only short, it is such a well-constructed and well-presented work that by
the end of the film, one can feel real sympathy for the patient who is about to die.
Shot in black and white, the directors Ahern and Lovett play up the comedy in the
piece for all it is worth, in particular using the nurse, played by Amelie Metcalfe, as a
prop on which to hang the visual gags, which are actually quite amusing.
Mezzo-soprano Imelda Drumm produces a marvelous performance as the patient,
taking a philosophical approach to the casual attitude of the doctor and even to her
own death, in which her ability to inflect her voice with wonderful degrees of irony
impresses. The doctor played by tenor Brenton Ryan was a suitable ne’er-do-well,
and sang with the necessary disregard to convince. Linehan’s music was lively,
accessible, caught the spirit of the age and is dramatically in line with the drama.

“Libra Solis”
The final opera was “Libris Solar” by Jennifer Walsh. This is an intriguing and
baffling work, the meaning of which is difficult to fathom. A video is playing of a
man walking around deserted city streets dressed in a wet suit. In front of it sits a
woman scientist dressed in a protective mask and suit. She explains he always wears
the wet suit, needs doughnuts when his legs are restless and has algae living inside
his body which he must feed. He is in fact part human, part non-human and part
neoprene, and apparently he made a choice, but cannot make any more.
A speculative guess at what is going on could be that the scientist has
experimented on the man, who willingly agreed to take part. He is transformed into
a new life form, which is only part human, and in order to survive, he must feed the
algae that live in his body. He took the decision to be a guinea pig, but now there is
no way back. Both he and the scientist have a passion for doughnuts. Then again,
this could be wrong.
The scientist is played by soprano Claudia Boyle. She has a pleasing voice and her
performance appears to be a good one, although without knowing exactly what she
was trying to achieve it is difficult to be certain about this. Walsh’s music is easy on
the ear, calm and inoffensive, but easily fades into the background. There are also
spoken inaudible voices repeating phrases periodically throughout the
performance.
Unfortunately, this is a difficult work to appreciate as it is too obscure. Why, for
example, is the scientist eating a pink doughnut?
Overall, the Irish National Opera’s strategy to embark on such a large-scale creative
program of works has proven itself to be a good one. In engaging with the medium
of streaming, rather than simply using it, they have created an experience for the
viewer which far surpasses a streamed event created for the theatre.
The idea of creating “shots,” rather than longer works, was also an excellent
decision. People can always find five to ten minutes during the day to watch one of
the works on offer; finding two hours, however, can be problematic. Moreover, the
quality of the works was excellent indeed; for sure, everyone has their own tastes,
and it is unlikely anyone is going to enjoy everything on offer, but there will certainly
be something to please everyone.
https://operawire.com/irish-national-opera-2020-21-review-20-shots-of-opera/

Opera News – Judith Malafronte
Wonderfully expressive and committed
IN RESPONSE TO THE PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN, Irish National Opera replaced an
ambitious mounting of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell with “20 Shots of Opera,” an equally
ambitious commissioning of twenty Ireland-based composers to produce works no longer
than eight minutes, with a maximum orchestra of eleven, and a cast no larger than two.
Filmed in various locations inside Dublin’s Gaiety Theater, from beautiful stage to cementblock
hallways, the works feature a variety of production styles, including realistic staging,
animation and sophisticated film techniques. The singers, some seen in extreme closeup, are
wonderfully expressive and committed, and the treble-heavy repertoire could find an
afterlife in chamber music settings or conservatories.
Mark O’Halloran and Alex Dowling’s Her Name

Separation and isolation are frequent themes. In Rupture, Ena Brennan’s dreamy music
showcases her text, a fight between good and evil. Soprano Rachel Goode’s rapturous moods
and enjoyment of simple sensual pleasures are interrupted by the harsh, critical and
doubtful comments of her doppelganger, mezzo Sarah Richmond (“you cannot silence me!”).
In identical wigs and makeup, the women’s images are superimposed, separated, and
blended, as ethereal chords surround and comfort the divided soul. In Linda
Buckley’s Glaoch (Crying Out), high-pitched squeals of a violin represent the technical
difficulties of two women (the excellent Sarah Shine and Gemma Ní Bhriain) connecting via
FaceTime and Zoom. Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Gaelic text (“no longer can I hear you breathe”)
is fragmented into long-held notes, clashing with the jangled and jumbled screens. Old
footage of the two singers, who are friends in real life, is combined with raw and emotional
close-ups, revealing the unsettled and unsettling pain of separation.
Drowning, fear and dread permeate both The Wait (Emma and Mark O’Halloran) and La
Corbière (by Gráinne Mulvey and Anne Le Marquand Hartigan), where Jo Mangan, who
directed several of the pieces, shows fine emotional control in the wrenchingly powerful
shipwreck story. Split screen techniques convey distance in Touch (music by Karen Power
and text by Ione), where surreal images of nature resemble computer workings and two
isolated individuals communicate in nonsense syllables and pointillist, staccato tones.
Barriers gradually disappear as do the man and woman (Gyula Nagy and Naomi Louisa
O’Connell).
Mark O’Halloran’s poignant text and Alex Dowling’s haunting music, skirting tonality,
characterizes Her Name, where a blue-eyed choir boy, the wonderful Seán Hayden, insists he
is fine in his new situation at boarding school. Yet he often calls the voicemail of his dead
mother, just to hear her voice. Knives and blood enhance the whispering speech-song of
Peter Fahey’s fractured ballad, Through and Through.
Moments of humor brighten the sequences now and then. In a cellphone video, the amazing
soprano Emma Nash, all trashy makeup, paste-on fingernails and outrageous bling, shrieks
at the cad who dumped her sister in Conor Mitchell’s ever-so-slightly Wagnerian A message
for Marty (or The Ring). Accompanied only by a tuba in Gerald Barry’s composition, tenor
Gavan Ring handles Mrs. Streicher’s absurdist, chattery text (drawn from Beethoven’s own
letters) and rangy vocal outbursts with consummate skill and dry humor.
Zoom dating becomes real in Close, where two women meet for the first time in a park,
cautiously optimistic and longing to touch (both had brought surgical gloves). To Stella
Feehily’s gentle text, Hannah Peel’s pulsing score, buoyant and romantic, gives soprano
Rachel Croash and mezzo-soprano Raphaela Mangan scope to convey both desire and
reticence with vocal beauty.
In The Colour Green, Holly Keating’s still images and animation, repeating and recycling,
accompany Robert Coleman’s score of humming, speaking, repetition, and startling bursts of
singing. In words by Mark Boyle, the fearful agitation of the singer (David Howes) clashes
with the images of nature and solitude. David Coonan and Dylan Coburn
Gray’s Verballing also uses animation by Patrick Moynihan to partner the intense vocalizing
of the excellent soprano Amy Ní Fhearraigh.
Several works center on scientific or ecological themes (Jennifer Walshe’s absurdist Libris
Solar, Irene Buckley and Jessica Traynor’s Ghost Apples, and Benedict Schlepper-
Connolly’s Dust, featuring Michelle O’Rourke’s rich and beautiful folk singing).
Medical issues fuel several striking works. Michael Gallen directs his own At a Loss with
stark and powerfully beautifully images, as soprano Orla Boylan portrays a dying woman’s
daughter contemplating power, life, and energy. In a more realistic hospital setting, anger
separates father and daughter in The Gift, where references to Italy in Marina Carr’s libretto
elicit appropriate faux-baroque moments from composer Evangelia Rigaki. Another
medically-themed work is The Patient Woman, a witty tragicomedy whose film noir look
matches Conor Linehan’s nimble score, in three tiny acts. As the doctor, whose oily concern
masks his helplessness, tenor Brenton Ryan handles a high tessitura with vocal elegance,

along with the stuttering “em”s and latin quotations of Louis Lovett’s libretto. In her
wheelchair, mezzo-soprano Imelda Drumm, accepts her fate with wry patience and
handsome vocalism.
Aebh Kelly and Andrew Gavin in Dichotomies of Lockdown
Jenn Kirby’s Dichotomies of Lockdown takes a lighter look at isolation, where mezzosoprano
Aebh Kelly and tenor Andrew Gavin sit at opposite ends of a long table in a sterile
room singing of birdsong and sunshine. Bells announce new twists and new vocabulary in
the pandemic—surge, two-meter distance, super-spreader, pods—and provoke desperate
sterilizing, hand washing, face shields, and Zoom calls where “Everything is wonderful”
quickly turns into “Everything is f—cked!”
The most specifically Covid related piece, inspired by a walk through the hallways of a
Birmingham hospital, is the emotionally shattering “Erth upon erth.” Under Jo Mangan’s
direction, soprano Sinéad Campbell-Wallace paints with fearless power the last moments of
a hospital patient. Andrew Hamilton’s music, a layering of long tones and harsh
combinations, sets a fifteenth–century text, “Earth upon earth has set all his thought / earth
upon earth is wondrously wrought.” —Judith Malafronte
https://www.operanews.com/Opera_News_Magazine/2021/1/Reviews/DUBLIN__20_Shots_of_Ope
ra.html

Seen & Heard International – Robert Beattie
highly inventive
Irish National Opera present
twenty new compact operas
inventively addressing themes of
today
30/12/2020 by Robert Beattie

Irish National Opera had to reschedule a number of large-scale productions earlier in the year,
including a planned staging of Rossini’s William Tell. Like many companies they have had to
respond flexibly and creatively to the restrictions imposed upon arts venues by the current
public health crisis. One of the areas which INO has been looking at is compact street operas
lasting between 6 and 10 minutes long and featuring the work of contemporary composers. 20
Shots of Opera features twenty compact operas by some of Ireland’s leading composers and
writers. These short operas look at subjects ranging from Beethoven’s laundry dilemmas, short
personal dramas examining relationship breakdowns and loss, to more global existential issues
such as the loss of biodiversity due to climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. There is
an enormous amount of musical variety in these short works and a wide range of styles ranging
from Broadway-type musical numbers to more avant-garde genres.
Gerard Barry’s Mrs Streicher sets to music Beethoven’s letter to Nanette Streicher in which
the great composer complains about his laundry and his servants. Gavan Ring gave an
impressive display of a cappella singing with occasional interjections from Stephen Irvine on
the tuba. Éna Brennan’s Rupture opened with bell-like chimes designed to create a blissful
ethereal sound world. The short work transformed into a dialogue between an unnamed woman
played by soprano Rachel Goode and her conscience played by mezzo-soprano Sarah
Richmond. The faces of the two women were superimposed on each other representing a
fragmented psyche.
Kelli-Ann Masterson in Ghost Apples
Irene Buckley’s Ghost Apples was one of my favourite operas in the collection. This short
work looked at the impact of plastics and other environmental damage on wildlife and the
natural world. Elaine Kelly coaxed compelling neo-Baroque textures from the RTÉ Concert
Orchestra and Kelli-Ann Masterson sang with a luminous tone. Linda
Buckley’s Glaoch opened with piercing sounds on the strings and this work had a more
contemporary, modernist feel. Soprano Sarah Shine and mezzo Gemma Ní Bhriain tried to
communicate using various IT media, although at various points the connection faltered.
Robert Coleman’s The Colour Green and David Coonan’s Verballing both featured
inventive animation provided by Holly Keating and Patrick Moynihan. Alex Dowling’s Her
Name was a plaintive meditation on loss and featured a young boy secretly mourning the loss
of his mother at a boarding school in Dublin. Boy soprano, Seán Hayden sang the principal

ole with enormous confidence and authority against a rich accompaniment on the strings.
Peter Fahey’s Through and Through was a miniature version of Berg’s Lulu with its magical
talking bird taunting a murderess who is subsequently accused of witchcraft and burned.
Michael Gallen’s At a Loss was another mournful meditation on loss (in this case a woman
waiting on bad news about her mother’s passing) while Andrew
Hamilton’s Erth upon Erth combined a medieval poem with avant-garde musical material to
depict a walk through a Covid hot zone.
Aebh Kelly and Andrew Gavin in Dichotomies of Lockdown
Jenn Kirby’s Dichotomies of Lockdown showed two people adapting to new rituals put in place
as a result of Covid such as hand washing and wearing masks. I was particularly impressed
with the changes in texture and colour over the course of this short piece and the inventive
vocal lines which were beautifully sung by mezzo Aebh Kelly and tenor Andrew Gavin. In the
final lines of the piece we heard the two singers singing ‘everything is great’ before finishing
off with ‘everything is fucked’ – a sentiment felt, I think, by many at the moment! Conor
Linehan’s The Patient Woman was a miniature 3-act musical in which a woman embraces her
doctor’s failure. The seemed to reflect back to the golden era of the Broadway musical using
a modernist tragi-comic lens.
Conor Mitchell’s A Message for Marty (or ‘The Ring’) depicted two Belfast girls losing their
temper. Mitchell used some interesting instrumental combinations in the orchestral
accompaniment and the decision to depict coarse working-class characters seemed to break
new ground in an intriguing way. Gráinne Mulvey’s La Corbière depicted the shipwreck of a
boat carrying Nazi German soldiers and captive French sex workers. The expressionist score
successfully depicted the confusion and anxiety surrounding this event. Emma
O’Halloran’s The Wait was another meditation on the consequences of climate change. The
image of a horse drowning in the rising waters was particularly affecting and I was impressed
with the intensity which mezzo Naomi Louise O’Connell brought to the vocal line.
Hannah Peel’s Close was a witty depiction of the challenges of dating during lockdown.
Soprano Rachel Croash and mezzo Raphaela Mangan blended together perfectly. Karen
Power’s Touch was a study of isolation and it used fragmented vocal and orchestral sounds
throughout. Evangelia Rigaki’s The Gift was a meditation on the love of a father for his
estranged daughter. There was some beautiful playing from Erin Hennessy on the violin
and Peadar Ó’Loinsigh on the cello in this piece. Benedict Schlepper-Connolly’s Dust was a
ballad of extinction mourning the loss of biodiversity and the collapse of the environment.
There were some gorgeous orchestral textures in the strings and harp at the beginning of the
piece was we saw various plants covered in plastic. Mezzo Michelle O’Rourke sang the Irish
folk melody which runs through the piece with great beauty of tone. Jennifer

Walshe’s Libris Solarwas a meditative work depicting the musings of a marine biologist.
Claudia Boyle sustained the vocal line brilliantly against a background of whispering voices.
INO are to be congratulated for commissioning such a marvellous body of work dealing with
so many important contemporary themes. I have often reflected on why the arts do not shine
more of a spotlight on the existential threat posed by the current climate crisis. I am delighted
to see Ireland’s composers, writers and artists do it in such highly inventive ways.
Robert Beattie
https://seenandheard-international.com/2020/12/irish-national-opera-present-twentynew-compact-operas-inventively-addressing-themes-of-today/

The Sunday Independent - Emer O’Kelly
A Sockdown in Lockdown
It may be depressing to realise that we are heading into another extended
period without hope of our theatres and concert halls opening. Yet
audiences as well as directors, writers, performers and composers are
adjusting to the reality. The result is work planned specifically with a
computer screen in mind. That may be no substitute for the open live stage
of a concert hall or theatre, but when it is planned by an expert craftsman,
it can come close to sending shivers of pleasure up your spine, even without
being part of a living, breathing audience.
And that is what has happened with Irish National Opera's 20 Shots of
Opera. It was filmed in November in the Gaiety Theatre, and became
available free of charge on www.irishnationalopera.ie on December 17. It's
still there.
The direction of the project was in the hands of actor director Hugh
O'Conor in his first foray into opera. He also directed three of the operas,
all 20 of which were commissioned by the INO. Each of them run from six
to eight minutes.
O'Conor's eye, very much that of a film man, is there throughout, and with
minimal sets (all by Sarah Bacon) there is a sense of appetite satisfied:
these pieces never leave you with a feeling that the composers, librettists
and directors are making the most of a bad situation. They engage as
unabashed works of art in their own right.
Only two seemed to me to be more sound exercises to show-case the voice
(although that in itself has a value), and they all told their brief stories from
charming to tragic to meditative without apology, and without seeming to
sigh for the more "normal" medium.

The composers were led off with an eminent bang, with Gerald Barry's Mrs
Streicher, with extracts from Beethoven's irritated letters to Nanette
Streicher, sung by tenor Gavan Ring as he rages about difficulties ranging
from losing his socks in the laundry to getting caught in the rain wearing
only thin trousers, all rising to a passion of clearly terrified neurosis. The
piece also featured Stephen Irvine on tuba.
All the scores are played, usually mood-perfectly, by the RTÉ Concert
Orchestra, with conducting credits throughout shared between INO artistic
director Fergus Sheil and Elaine Kelly. Twenty singers, several actors, and a
number of directors contribute, with Jo Mangan responsible for five, and
the directorial list including Annabelle Comyn, Aoife Spillane-Hinks, Tom
Creed, Caitriona McLaughlin, and husband and wife team Louis Lovett and
Muireann Ahern.
But it is, of course, the singers who take pride of place, and they include
stars such as Claudia Boyle, Imelda Drumm, Orla Boylan, Mairéad Buicke,
Sinéad Campbell-Wallace and Andrew Gavin, through to the up and
coming: Brenton Ryan, Rachel Croash, Raphaela Mangan, Naomi-Louisa
O'Connell, Gyula Nagy, as well as enchanting boy soprano Sean Hayden
(and that's not all of them) and it is an extraordinarily impressive guide to
the vocal talent in this country, much of it under-used and undercelebrated.
For the operas themselves, those that "tell a story" have particular appeal,
and make for a ready appreciation of the approachability of new music.
Hannah Peel's Close gives us the first "real date" between two young
women who have met online, and now, socially distanced in the time of
Covid, set out to get to know each other, apologetically admitting that each
has brought protective gloves. It's almost brutally touching as delivered by
Rachel Croash and Raphaela Mangan.
Conor Lenihan's The Patient Woman gives us a stridently hypochondriac
woman (Imelda Drumm) bothering her exhausted doctor (Brenton Ryan).
"You're all I've got, Doc," she whines. Except it's true, as she reaches the
blank wall of death.
Alex Dowling's Her Name shows a boy chorister, now boarding at school
following the death of his mother. ("I'm a reminder.") But the boy holds his
dead mother in his head, never voicing her name.
In contrast, David Coonan's Verballing is hilarious, as Amy Ní Fhearraigh
sings the (animated) role of a garda being coached in how to interview
suspects without walking herself into trouble.

There isn't a bummer among the 20, but perhaps it's Jenn Kirby's
Dichotomies of Lockdown which best sums up 2020 as Aebh Kelly (mezzo)
and Andrew Gavin (tenor) "converse", moving from eulogising the garden
birdsong to listing the dreary familiarities of lockdown life. Their opinion?
"We're f***ed!"
Operatically, as this collection proves, we're definitely not.
Sunday Independent Living
https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/theatre-arts/a-sock-down-in-lockdown-with-
20-shots-of-artistry-39950841.html

Irish Independent – Katy Hayes
When the pandemic tide recedes, this will be one of the gems remaining on
the shore.
20 Shots of Opera irishnationalopera.ie until Dec 2021: Forged by
the pandemic, Irish National Opera’s filmed project would have
been well worth doing any time
Irish National Opera unleashed this smorgasbord online just before Christmas, where it got a
bit lost among all the tinsel. It is a rapid canter through various contemporary musical styles,
ranging from the avant-garde, through the richly melodious, to operetta.
It makes an excellent toe-dipper for anyone interested in a taste of contemporary opera, but
nervous of commitment. Themes recur: technology features in seven; the environment and
death feature in about five each; and Covid-19 is the direct focus of four.
The mini-operas range from six to ten minutes. There is plenty of wit and several are a
complete hoot.
In Mrs Streicher, composer Gerald Barry creates a setting for a letter from Beethoven to his
housekeeper complaining about his laundry missing a pair of stockings.
The Beethoven text is both crazed and tinged with genius; he equates the carrying of
firewood with Christ carrying the cross. The score is comic minimalist tuba and tenor Gavan
Ring gives it socks.
Composer Éna Brennan scores her own libretto in Rupture, a clever psychological piece
where sunny soprano Rachel Goode is consistently thwarted by an internal self-sabotaging
voice, sung by mezzo-soprano Sarah Richmond.
The two singers are similarly styled and the film cross fades between them. This is a neat
piece, its intelligence underpinned by a knowing humour, expertly directed by Jo Mangan.

Verballing by composer David Coonan and librettist Dylan Coburn Gray employs a deft
animation by Patrick Moynihan in an arresting piece about a garda being coached to defend
herself against the accusation of leading a witness.
The black-and-white short film explores subtle workforce bullying, with shades of anti-
Traveller racism. Soprano Amy Ní Fhearraigh sings the young garda role with escalating
panic. Clever and punchy, this is also very funny. Director Caitriona McLaughlin pulls the
piece together neatly. This is first-rate work visually, musically and dramatically.
Michael Gallen’s song of sound-sensitive grief, At a Loss, performed movingly by soprano
Orla Boylan, is a more traditional and familiar aria type.
Similarly, Alex Dowling’s composition to Mark O’Halloran’s libretto, Her Name, opens the
emotional gates to a boy’s loss of his mother. It is sung by boy soprano Seán Hayden and
directed by Hugh O’Conor. These two pieces are a reminder that classic arias have a direct
route to the core of the psyche, with opera doing what it arguably does best: providing a
gateway to deep emotion.
A highlight at the comedy end of the spectrum is Conor Mitchell’s pair of brassy Belfast
sisters in A Message for Marty. Soprano Emma Nash sends an accusatory video to Marty,
who has dumped her sister, mezzo-soprano Carolyn Dobbin, for an older woman.
Audacious black humour and over-the-top operatic emoting are enhanced by a rich dramatic
score. Director Davey Kelleher harnesses the energy of high opera to the impulses of anarchy
and is completely unafraid.
The Gift by composer Evangelia Rigaki with libretto by Marina Carr is a wry drama about a
man who holds off death until his daughter returns from her travels. A meditation on fatherdaughter
complexity is expertly delivered by actor Seán McGinley and mezzo-soprano
Doreen Curran.
The score has churchy overtones with bell chimes; death comes with gentle musical
dissonance. Director Jo Mangan shapes a weighty drama in minutes in one of the most
theatrical of the pieces.
The series director is Hugh O’Conor, and the short films are mostly conducted by either INO
director Fergus Sheil or INO associate Elaine Kelly.
Mini operas on this scale are not usually pragmatic for stage production. When the pandemic
tide recedes, this will be one of the gems remaining on the shore.
https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/theatre-arts/online-opera-collection-offers-arich-tasting-menu-39945000.html

The Irish Mail on Sunday – Michael Moffat
Superb Shot in the Arm for Opera Fans

Sunday Business Post – Dick O’Riordan
…it is well worth dipping into the Irish
National Opera website whether Twenty
Shots of Opera, a series of 20 short new
compositions are available, free to the
public. They include many of our finest
young singers displaying not just their
musical talents, but also their ability to
adapt. The incredible use of old opera to
get many important modern messages
across is both impressive and delightful.
You will soon find that it is best not to
try and rush through the lot, but to take
them in small (ahem) doses. A couple a
day will do fine. You will then find it
almost impossible not to return to many
of them for further study – and indeed
pleasure

Journal of Music – Adrian Smith
A mark of real artistic vision
Shots of Politics and Loss in New Irish
Opera
Responding to the circumstances of
the pandemic, Irish National Opera
recently commissioned twenty new
miniature operas from composers in
Ireland that were filmed and premiered
online as '20 Shots of Opera'. Adrian
Smith reviews all twenty works.
If there is one thing that the pandemic has brought home to bear, it is that
there is no substitute for live performances. Streamed performances, while a
necessary temporary solution, lack the aura of the real thing and after a year
of virtually no live music it is difficult to muster the same level of
enthusiasm to watch yet another performance on a screen from one’s own
living room. However, when it comes to contemporary music, at least some
of the excitement is preserved since that music, by its very nature, has that

crucial quality ‘newness’ and being ‘current’ that, at least in part, fill in for
the impossibility of being there in person. Therefore, it was a mark of real
artistic vision on the part of Irish National Opera to embark on this ambitious
project of commissioning twenty composers to write miniature operas of
between five and ten minutes in length that would be filmed and made
available to the public free of charge. In terms of the sheer logistical
challenge of the project, which involved the collaboration of over 160 opera
professionals, there is no denying the achievement of INO and its artistic
director Fergus Sheil in getting this project over the line. Out of the
endeavour came operas of every conceivable style touching on a range of
themes from our current difficulties to more esoteric concerns. This review
looks at each of the works in the running order in which they appear on
the INO website.
Gerald Barry – Mrs Streicher
Mrs Streicher is one of several pieces of Barry’s that may one day find their
way into an opera on Beethoven. For tenor (Gavan Ring) and tuba (Stephen
Irvine), the piece is a setting of a letter that Beethoven sent to one Nanette
Streicher, a composer and piano maker, complaining about the slovenly
attitude of his servant to taking care of the laundry duties. For fans of Barry,
there is nothing particularly new in this setting. Beethoven is moulded into an
archetypal Barry character – a kind of comic despot – following previous
male characters such as Sir Joshua Cramer in The Intelligence Park or Lady
Bracknell (she is sung by a bass) in The Importance of Being Earnest. The
vocal line is beautifully shaped and meanders without being aimless in the
way that only Barry can write such melodies, but for a full opera on such a
complex personality as Beethoven, a more rounded portrait would be needed.
The occasional interjection of the tuba is presumably intended to have some
comic value but again, if you know Barry’s work well, you will have heard
this joke before.
Éna Brennan – Rupture
Everyday trivialities writ large are also the theme of Éna
Brennan’s Rupture which features a woman (soprano Rachel Goode) battling
with her alter ego (mezzo-soprano Sarah Richmond) over her ability to
accomplish a range of self-esteem boosting goals: passing the driving test
first time, home ownership, losing weight, etc. On the surface it seems that
the better self manages to overcome its demons as the alter ego voice drops
out and we are treated to an elegiac coda with picnics in the park and freshlybaked
cinnamon buns. However, the contrived nature of the music –
blissfully diatonic and sung in the style of a musical – puts this in doubt.

Irene Buckley – Ghost Apples
The consequences for nature of our materialistic culture is the focus of Irene
Buckley’s Ghost Apples in which a female scientist (soprano Kelli-Ann
Masterson) ponders the fate of the oceans by studying seabird corpses loaded
with plastic debris in a lab. While the subject matter is both tragic and deeply
relevant, the text’s mixture of scientific data and well-worn metaphors
(‘nothing growing in the poisoned womb’) as well as the flatness of the
music mitigate against forming an emotional response. The material is very
conventional – short diatonic fragments in canonic loops for the upbeat
sections along with non-vibrato string elegies for the adagio reflections – and
interest in the vocal writing is limited by the tendency to repeat large chunks
of the text on a single note.
Linda Buckley – Glaoch
On the surface, Linda Buckley’s Glaoch is about something we all have been
experiencing recently: the inability to meet in person and our reliance on
communication technology. The accompanying video features images of two
women – soprano Sarah Shine and mezzo-soprano Gemma Ní Bhriain –
trying to communicate on various platforms. Hampered by a series of weak
connections, the line eventually breaks off leading to an extended scene of
tears and sad faces. While it is not the case that this doesn’t have some
potential for reflection on our current predicament, the problem is that the
text and the video inflate what has become an annoying everyday experience
for most people into an apocalyptic scenario with music that would not seem
out of place in the final scene of Gladiator. My point is: it is complete
overkill for such a humdrum situation. In many respects, this is a shame
because the music, detached from the video and text, is very moving and
expressive and could have worked well in a more thought-through scenario.
Robert Coleman – The Colour Green
Continuing the environmental theme is Robert Coleman’s The Colour Green,
which reflects on the wisdom of Mark Boyle, an Irish writer who has
forsaken modern-day materialism for a life closer to nature in rural Galway.
Set to an animated video, the piece utilises recordings of Boyle’s own spoken
voice in which he discusses writing a book in longhand while a bass-baritone
(David Howes) sings about his sleep patterns which are in sync with the light
of day. Boyle’s reflections are interesting in themselves but whether or not
Coleman’s music adds anything to them is another question. The circularity
of the music does have a certain meditative quality which certainly
complements the text although the dizzying glissandi towards the end of the
piece – just when Boyle is talking about the reviving properties of the herbs

that his girlfriend has been picking – suggest something else entirely and
seem out of step with the calm tranquility that had gone before.
David Coonan – Verballing
David Coonan’s Verballing dramatises a training session in which a young
female member of the Gardaí (soprano Amy Ní Fhearraigh) is coached about
how to respond to awkward questions. The session is in the form of a
dialogue between a soprano representing the female guard who only answers
‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Ok’ or ‘Ah, Yes’ and her coach/interrogator whose part is
projected as text with each new line synced to a staccato chord played by
trumpet and trombone. As the questioning becomes more intense the
projections speed up making them a challenge to read, mirroring the mental
confusion of the guard undergoing the ordeal. In one sense this is a novel
solution to the challenge of traversing a large amount of text in such a short
space of time, on another level, it makes the experience a little bit tedious for
the viewer. Nevertheless, the music is well paced and builds up over the
duration with a slow, unfaltering momentum that makes the soaring vocal
line sound increasingly desperate reflecting the overwhelming institutional
power that the piece intended to portray.
Alex Dowling – Her Name
Alex Dowling’s Her Name captures the emotional fragility of a young
schoolboy (acted by Matthew Hayden) sent away to boarding school after
having suffered the loss of his mother. Mark O’Halloran’s delicate text in a
first-person narrative and Hayden’s refined performance as the young boy,
leave it to the music to fill out the emotional subtext. Although the scene is
painted with the same tonal colour, Dowling’s music is not static and the
movement of the music skillfully follows the emotional counters of the text
producing a rounded portrait of the boy’s repressed feelings of loss. The
melodic writing for the boy soprano (sung by Seán Hayden) is excellent and
while it comes close to a pop song at times it doesn’t come off as corny or
sentimental. The piece was one of the best musical depictions of a single
character’s emotional state in the project.
Peter Fahey – Through and Through
Fahey’s opera short Through and Through is based on the traditional ballad
‘Young Hunting’ which tells the story of a woman who kills her lover after
he professes his love for another woman. Naturally, she murders him and is
burnt at the stake for doing so, but in the middle of the ballad, she is
tormented by a magical bird who witnesses the crime. Despite the short
duration, Fahey manages to portray a range of emotional states from the
unhinged opening of whistling and scratching noises where the woman

(soprano Daire Halpin) tries to coax the bird to come down from the tree, to
the pulsing, deranged eroticism of the central section were she compares her
sexual prowess to her rival. The impact of this very convincing piece was
greatly helped by some nifty camerawork and a great performance
from Halpin.
Michael Gallen – At a Loss
Not surprisingly given the current state of the world, the theme of loss was
touched on by several composers. In Michael Gallen’s At a Loss, we
are presented with the reflections of a woman (soprano Orla Boylan) as she
awaits news of her mother’s imminent death. Surrounded by electronic
devices and equipment, her thoughts drift into an extended philosophical
reflection on the connection between electric currents and life itself which
seems to imply that her mother is on life support. While the music is
colourful and accomplished, these reflections come across as very contrived
and rather distant for such a scenario making it difficult to form any
emotional response to the piece.
Andrew Hamilton – erth upon erth
In terms of sheer impact, Andrew Hamilton’s erth upon erth stood out as one
of the more convincing engagements with current issues. Although it uses the
text of a medieval poem, the words are largely irrelevant as they are stretched
out by soprano Sinéad Campbell Wallace whose soaring voice is intertwined
with a truly terrifying texture of string glissandi between unisons. The video
shows a close up of a woman’s petrified expression as her grip on life
becomes ever more tenuous. Adding to the feverish atmosphere is a
background of rumbling percussion and the strangely disturbing sound of a
referee’s whistle, which is blown relentlessly signifying the complete
submission to fate. The terror subsides towards the end as the music adopts a
slightly more elegiac tone as it becomes apparent that the woman is leaving
this world for the next. A short hymn-like coda on the brass accompanies the
women as she is wheeled out of the hospital in a bodybag. This piece is an
utterly compelling portrayal of the destruction wrought by the pandemic.
Jenn Kirby – Dichotomies of Lockdown
Taking a diametrically opposite approach to Covid-19 is Jenn
Kirby’s Dichotomies of Lockdown is a series of witty vignettes based on the
contrasting response of two people – mezzo-soprano Aebh Kelly and tenor
Andrew Gavin – to living with the pandemic. Musically, the piece is pretty
basic stuff indeed with transparently tonal harmonies and the repetitive
patterns in no short supply. However the amusing text, written by Kirby
herself, is well constructed and many people, especially those inclined

towards ‘light’ humour, will be able to relate to the various character ‘traits’
that have appeared in those around us, and indeed in ourselves, during the
course of the pandemic.
Conor Linehan – The Patient Woman
In contrast, viewers may be left scratching their heads wondering what Conor
Linehan’s The Patient Woman is all about. Ostensibly, the text by Louis
Lovett is a tragicomedy where an elderly female patient ‘finds the strength to
embrace her doctor’s failing’ presumably after a misdiagnosis, although this
is far from clear. In any case, the complex emotional journey that this would
seem to entail is not even attempted and both characters are utterly rigid and
unsympathetic despite the piece being divided into three acts. The woman
(mezzo-soprano Imelda Drumm) adopts a haughty, matronly tone; while the
doctor (tenor Brenton Ryan) appears entirely uninterested and can only
muster the strength to rattle off a few sayings in Latin. The intent of all of
this is very unclear and Linehan’s music, which is accomplished pastiche, is
wasted in this scenario.
Conor Mitchell – A Message for Marty (Or the ‘Ring’)
Most composers have probably entertained the prospect of juxtaposing trashy
pop culture and operatic singing at some point but most think better of the
idea. For those who go through with it, it is generally best to throw subtly out
the window. Thankfully, this is exactly the approach taken by Conor Mitchell
whose scenario, written by himself, consists of a video message taken by the
older sister of a girl who has just been dumped by text message from
‘Marty’. The girls – Emma Nash as ‘big sister’ and Carolyn Dobbin as the
younger sister Jackie – are naturally still in their pyjamas and launch into a
series of hysterical tirades between the bedroom and an ensuite bathroom
strewn with cosmetics, toilet roll and empty pizza boxes. If Mitchell’s
scenario leaves no proletarian stereotype untouched, the music, on the other
hand, is quite sophisticated and has the required dexterity to follow the peaks
and troughs of the big sister’s rant. Both singers manage the difficult task of
combining a Belfast accent with an operatic style and additional credit must
also go to Nash, who double-jobbed as the smartphone camerawoman for
the video.
Gráinne Mulvey – La Corbière
Gráinne Mulvey’s La Corbière is based on Anne Le Marquand Hartigan’s
play of the same name which tells the true story of a shipwreck carrying Nazi
soldiers and captive French sex workers. The piece is clearly part of a fulllength
operatic project that Mulvey has envisaged and this excerpt is devoted
to the moment when the ship is going down. It concentrates on the fate of

two of the women – played by soprano Mairéad Buicke and mezzo-soprano
Anne Marie Gibbons – whose desperate state of panic is brutally depicted
through a music that is dense, abstract and utterly dehumanizing, featuring a
menacing undercurrent of double basses, alarming repeated notes on the
higher woodwinds and snarling trombones and string glissandi in the middle
register. The vocal lines do tend to repeat on the same note but in this
claustrophobic atmosphere it is highly effective as the women are not in
control of their own destiny. In the finish, a deathly cold coda closes out the
scene as the water subsumes and drowns the women. If 20 Shots of
Opera was a competition for the commissioning of a full-scale opera, then
this piece would be a serious contender.
Emma O’Halloran – The Wait
Panic at rising waters is also the theme of Emma
O’Halloran’s The Wait which depicts a woman (mezzo-soprano Naomi
Louisa O’Connell) stranded during a flood. She has just witnessed a horse
being drowned and fears she might be next. The music builds up from a
drone on the double bass, icy string harmonics in the high registers and
repeated figures and tremolandi on strings accompanying the rising
floodwaters. While the music is effective, the text, again by Mark
O’Halloran, does not work so well in this case. It seems that when the
protagonist, operatic or otherwise, is in a tight spot and is actually describing
the situation to you in a blow-by-blow manner (‘And the waters keep rising’,
‘I hear it lapping on the stairs’, I am still here’, etc.) it inevitably tends to
lessen the dramatic impact of the scene. While the piece might be an allegory
for our current climate change predicament, this might have come across
more powerfully if the text had not been so literal.
Hannah Peel – Close
The problem of dating in the midst of the pandemic is the topic of Hannah
Peel’s Close which features two women – soprano Rachel Croash and
mezzo-soprano Raphaela Mangan – who have met on an online dating site
and are navigating the perils of a first date. The first-date scene is a classic
theatrical set piece and Stella Feehily’s text of humorous banalities would
work well as the opening scene in a full-length play. However, Peel’s
gushingly bright, major key score completely levels out any of the interesting
dramatic potential of such a scenario. The music is one-dimensional,
breezing through each line of the text and maintaining the same tempo for the
entire scene. Both characters’ music is undifferentiated and their lines could
potentially be swapped without it making any great difference. All of this
means that the nudging humour tends to grate rather than charm.

Karen Power – TOUCH
Karen Power’s TOUCH takes Beckettian abstraction to a new level creating a
world in which two people – mezzo-soprano Naomi Louisa O’Connell and
baritone Gyula Nagy – occupy separate dimensions and attempt to
communicate through a severely limited language of only five words. The
dimensions are delineated using a split screen with the man on the left
illuminated with yellow lighting and the woman to the right with green
lighting. Various imagery of remote natural landscapes are projected onto the
wall behind each singer and a soundscape of natural sounds is blended with
the music of the ensemble. The singers initial attempts to form whole words
from the limited text are highly fragmented but they eventually come
together at the end leaving it up to the viewer to guess what all of this
might mean.
Evangelia Rigaki – The Gift
The most convincing portrayal of loss is The Gift by Evangelia Rigaki which
explores the relationship between a terminally ill father (Seán McGinley) and
his estranged daughter (mezzo-soprano Doreen Curran). Dramatically, the
juxtaposition between the angry but deeply pained spoken lines of the father
and the sung lines of the daughter creates an intense confrontation. Although
some of the text by Marina Carr contains direct accusations against each
other, the majority of the lines are indirect, pointing to a complex backstory
that is implied but never fully elucidated. It is into this interpretive space that
Rigaki’s wonderfully crafted music works wonders, pulling at the emotional
scars that lurk below the surface of the text. Like many of the composers that
feature in this project, Rigaki’s writing for the string orchestra oscillates
between repetitive patterns and minimalist plaintive sections but it is
infinitely more sophisticated; constantly changing, responding to nuances in
the text and never settling on a single pattern for more than a few seconds.
There is even a sense of place – Sicily, where the daughter has lived
estranged from her father – which is hinted at through Baroque sounding
passagework and the imprint of Irish Catholicism is suggested by the
periodic tolling of church bells. Terrific performances by McGinley and
Curran and an expertly produced video directed by Jo Mangan greatly
contribute to the overall impact of this deeply moving piece.
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly – Dust
Again touching on environmental concerns, Benedict Schlepper-
Connolly’s Dust is a ‘ballad of extinction, biodiversity loss and ecological
collapse’, a theme which it approaches elliptically through a poem set to an
attractive melody with the lilt of an Irish traditional lament. Sung by mezzosoprano
Michelle O’Rourke, the ballade is accompanied by a tenderly soft

string accompaniment with ripples of percussion. Pleasant as it is, there is
nothing in the way of opera here in terms of drama or plot and the piece is
really just a song with a music video showing a woman transitioning from
being dressed in a wedding outfit and surrounded by plants, to a hazmat suit
and a bare stage as the lights go out. The symbolism is not too difficult to
work out.
Jennifer Walshe – Libris Solar
Walshe’s piece is a meditation by a marine biologist (soprano Claudia Boyle)
on that strange mix of ‘human, non-human and neoprene’ that is the wetsuitwearing
and doughnut-obsessed ‘Libris Solar’. The video shows a scientist
looking at samples of something while images of a man (Patrick Martins)
wandering around the street of Dublin in a wetsuit are projected behind on a
screen. While the piece does not have anything remotely operatic about it, the
attraction is the wonderfully shaped vocal line that haunted me for several
days after first listening to it. A delicate accompaniment of strings and harp
gives the piece a unique harmonic and timbral colour that is maintained
throughout. In the background, excerpts of a text by philosopher Alphonso
Lingis are whispered throughout but the words which the soprano sings –
‘Libris Solar… wears only wetsuits…runs for doughnuts when his legs are
restless’ – are clearly by Walshe herself. While this might seem like a load of
mumbo jumbo, Libris Solar may not be such an abstract phenomenon to
anyone who swims at one of Dublin’s many bathing spots where wetsuits,
pastries, and narcissism are all on regular display.
A golden opportunity
While the commissioning of twenty works in any genre will naturally
produce material that varies in quality, the best pieces in the project were
those that stuck to the traditional operatic principles of musical
characterisation and drama. The idea that contemporary opera should do
away with these principles is only a convincing one if a composer can come
up with something to replace them rather than simply side-stepping, wittingly
or unwittingly, into another genre such as music video, soundtrack or music
theatre. The other noticeable trend was that an engagement with
contemporary political issues such as climate change and the pandemic really
only works in opera if the scenario plays out on a human emotional level
rather than on an abstract conceptual one.
The thing that was consistent throughout the project, however, was the
standard of singing which was of a very high level indeed and there seems to
be no shortage of talent coming through. The standard of musical

performance by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra was also excellent and again,
Sheil must be given a lot of credit for taking a hands-on approach, splitting
the conducting duties between himself and Elaine Kelly. Indeed, the project
as a whole can boast of very slick production values in everything from the
filming of the series overseen by director Hugh O’Conor to the online
presentation that set standards rarely seen in large-scale presentations of
contemporary music in Ireland.
There has been something of a boom in Irish opera in the last few years and,
given their central role in guiding the performance of opera in the
country, INO have an obligation to bring the best of it to fruition. The
question now turns to whether Sheil and the INO can cultivate their
production of contemporary opera into large-scale live productions over the
coming years. Assuming that opera punters will be drooling into their
champagne at the prospect of live opera returning in the not too distant
future, programming a healthy dose of new work next season may be a
golden opportunity to introduce contemporary work to new audiences.
Visit www.irishnationalopera.ie.
Published on 14 January 2021
Adrian Smith is Lecturer in Musicology at TU Dublin Conservatory of Music
and Drama.
https://journalofmusic.com/criticism/shots-politics-and-loss-new-irish-opera

The Arts Review – Chris O’Rourke
Like a more-ishly rich box of chocolates, 20 Shots of Opera ensures the
taste hits keep on coming
Be it Dublin, London, or New York, Irish National Opera's online delight, 20 Shots of
Opera, has had many reaching for superlatives. As well they should. Comprised of
twenty short pieces up to ten minutes in length, commissioned from a gender balanced
mix of twenty composers, each work intentionally engages with the screen rather than
trying to replicate a live experience. Playing with dissonance, tonality, and loops, using
animation, splits screens, and innovative camera angles, the end results are joyous,
heart breaking, weird, and somewhat wonderful. With each work having its own
Youtube slot, allowing easier navigation without unnecessary scrolling, it's less an opera
parade so much as an opera hand grenade. Exploding expectations and showing
remarkable innovation, 20 Shots of Opera delivers extraordinary moments of music,
singing and design.
A series of recurring themes soon emerge, with COVID both directly and indirectly
dominating. Robert Coleman's The Colour Green (text Mark Boyle) speaks to the new
normal of creating work under lockdown conditions. Andrew Hamilton's erth upon
erth also speaks to COVID with a deliciously dark twist at the end. As does Dichotomies
of Lockdown by Jenn Kirby, again with a delightful last second sting in the tail.
Touch, by Karen Power (text Ione), explores social distancing, as does Glaoch by Linda
Buckley (text Doireann Ní Ghríofa), highlighting its pains and perils as soprano Sarah
Shine, and mezzo-soprano Gemma Ní Bhriain, negotiate the heartbreaking restrictions
of online communication. Hannah Peel's darlingly charming Close (text by Stella
Feehily) finds soprano Rachel Croash, and mezzo-soprano Raphaela Mangan, turning in

terrific performances, along with a stunningly sung duet, as two women meeting for a
first date under social distancing.
For those who like a little less COVID in their lockdown viewing, 20 Shots of Opera offers
a gamut of experiences as diverse as they are memorable. Concerns for the environment
feature in Irene Buckley's Ghost Apples (text Jessica Traynor), and again in Dust, with
music and text by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, lamenting the loss and destruction of
the environment. Psychological states find voice in Éna Brennan's Rupture, which might
initially evoke a Disney lightness, before everything spilts to become a recognisable
nightmare, the layered singing sounding superb. Peter Fahey's eerily moving Through
and Through finds a haunting Daire Halpin being visually and vocally mesmerising,
which Annabelle Comyn directs with style. The Gift by Evangelia Rigaki, with libretti by
Marina Carr, strays into familiar Carr territory of daddy and daughter issues. Emma
O’Halloran's, The Wait, (text Mark O'Halloran) journeys into dark, and often disturbing
spaces.
Loss finds its voice in A Message for Marty, (or 'The Ring') by Conor Mitchell, which
sees soprano Emma Nash, and mezzo-soprano Carolyn Dobbin, revealing that the only
thing more dangerous than a woman scorned is her over protective sister. At A Loss by
Micheal Gallen mediates death and electricity like a secular hymn. In Her Name by Alex
Dowling, with text by Mark O’Halloran, sees superb boy soprano, Seán Hayden, deliver a
sensitive portrayal capturing the loneliness of living through grief in a boarding school.
Throughout, there's often a thrilling juxtaposition between a largesse in sound and the
banality of textual details. Between the dissonant in music and the harmonious in voice.
Often it's the unexpected that yields the fresher experience, or something that's just
wonderfully quirky. The Patient Woman by Conor Linehan sees text by Louis Lovett
channelling his nostalgic leanings a la Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, poking playful fun at
both Hollywood noir and opera. Jennifer Walshe's Libris Solar features a doughnut
loving Claudia Boyle deftly directed by Tom Creed, and Gráinne Mulvey's unsettling La
Corbière (text by Anne Le Marquand Hartigan), finds soprano Mairéad Buicke and
mezzo-soprano Anne Marie Gibbons as little more than voices and footsteps in the mist.
Gerald Barry's laundry driven tirade Mrs. Streicher, inspired by letters from Beethoven,
laments the real miseries of the world, like lost laundry and poor servants.
Much of 20 Shots of Opera's success lies in embracing the online visual medium, even if
several exhibit a fetish for extreme close-ups of eyes, lips, and teeth. Indeed,
underscoring some magnificent singing by some of opera's brightest stars lies a hugely
fruitful collaboration with the technical team and directors. Katie Davenport (costume),
Paul Keogan (lights), Luca Truffarelli (video design), and Sarah Bacon (production
design), all make significant contributions. Along with directors Annabelle Comyn,
Stephanie Dufresne, Joe Mangan, Tom Creed, Aoife Spillane-Hinks, Muireann Ahern,

Davey Kelleher, Sarah Baxter and Hugh O' Connor (also series director). Conductors
Elaine Kelly and Fergus Shiel, conducting the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, also deliver some
sterling work, the latter, as INO's artistic director, having every reason to be particularly
pleased. Irish National Opera is still in its infancy at two years old. Yet already it's
cementing its reputation as an international opera company for the 21st century.
Perhaps what 20 Shots of Opera challenges most are lazy assumptions about what opera
is or should be, as well as how best to go about presenting it online. If one of the less
inspiring outcomes of COVID has been the often disappointing manner in which
performance has been translating online, 20 Shots of Opera struts about the medium in
all its operatic majesty and owns it by embracing it. True, it will never replace live
performance. Yet these are more than simply short films infused with a music video
sensibility, being more akin to miniature operatic experiences. Each achieving what it
sets out to do on its own terms.
Like a more-ishly rich box of chocolates, 20 Shots of Opera ensures the taste hits keep on
coming. Naturally, some flavours will be more to some people's liking, and others won't
seem as appealing. But that's the point of a box of chocolates: they cater for a range of
tastes. Whether sweet, sour, or savoury, each hit in this operatic chocolate box has been
prepared to perfection with considerable love and care. You never know, tasting
something outside of your comfort zone might reveal a new delight.
https://www.theartsreview.com/single-post/20-shots-of-opera

Der Standard (Austria) – Stefan Ender
a romp through hot topics and the psyche of the human being during
lockdown.
Short operas against the crisis: 20 Shots of Opera about plastic, Covid-19 and love
Irish National Opera doesn’t just stream old productions. It’s combating lockdown lethargy
with 20 new mini-musical theatre pieces.
“20 Shots of Opera”: a romp through hot topics and the psyche of the human being during
lockdown.
Even before human beings were declared classified matter during the Covid-19 pandemic,
laptops, Smartphones and tablets had morphed into a convenient master key for the world.
Whether archive, library or bank, whether travel agency, dating agency or sex shop, whether
supermarket, shopping centre or newspaper: with just a few clicks, these handy digital
servants brought the wide world into our living rooms.

As lockdowns were extended ad infinitum, attendance at concerts and opera performances
shifted increasingly to the flat screen. Concert halls and opera houses all over the world
opened up their digital archives – sometimes for a fee, often free of charge – and offered
streamed content of all types and lengths. All very good. And yet: presented for the most part
were, and still are, historical highlights.
But Irish National Opera has changed tack and has used the crisis as a catalyst for creativity.
In the middle of last year, short operas exploring contemporary society were commissioned
from Irish artists. Now the 20 Shots of Opera have been posted online. As highly focused
mini-operas, these six to eight minute long works enliven the genre.
Painful divide
Only a minority of the musical theatre miniatures deal with the pandemic and its
consequences for our social life. Glaoch by Linda Buckley, for example, addresses the
painful divide between the analogue of yesterday and the digital days of Facetime. Jenn
Kirby’s two-person piece Dichotomies of Lockdown tells of the very concrete pandemic rules
of conduct such as distance and hygiene. And Hannah Peel’s Close depicts the cautious
approach of two lovers.
Pollution of nature? It happens. Ghost Apples by Irene Buckley addresses this: the short work
specifically deals with plastic waste in our troubled oceans, to which Benedict Schlepper-
Connolly is not likely to be indifferent either. His opus Dust describes an ecological collapse.
But in the 20 offerings, not everything is tragically conceived.
In the opening work Mrs Streicher by Gerald Barry, a humoresque for tenor and tuba, one
participates in the bickering between Ludwig van Beethoven and his household staff.
Volcanic rage also dominates Conor Mitchell’s A Message for Marty. After Marty has broken
up with Jackie by text message, her big sister gives him hell over the phone.
Range and quality
What adds to the amusement here is that the trash tragedy was filmed by Davey Kelleher in
the style of a TV-Reality-Soap. In any case, the range and quality of the stage productions
and the cinematic realisations of the XS operas are an outstanding feature of this innovative
project.
Obviously, there were many fine film directors and video designers among the 160 plus
artists involved in the creation of 20 Shots of Opera. Hugh O’Conor’s film adaptation of
Robert Coleman’s The Colour Green, which deals with a life without technology, is
reminiscent of a graphic novel; Caitriona McLaughlin’s film version of David Coonan’s
mini-crime novel Verballing has comics-like elements. The black-and-white film worlds of
The Patient Woman (directed by Muireann Ahern, Louis Lovett) are also wonderful.
Fragile Ballade
The musical means with which the 20 composers tell their stories are downscaled, diverse,
and sometimes rather retro. Schlepper-Connolly, for example, for Dust chooses the form of a
traditional ballad, which he subtly underscores instrumentally. Peter Fahey also tells Through

and Through as a ballad with reduced, fragile accompaniment. Michael Gallen’s At a Loss is
brilliant: his varied, colourful six-minute piece has a dramaturgical structure and
development.
Needless to say some of the works disappoint, losing themselves in mystification and
monotony. All in all, however, the project initiated by Fergus Sheil, the Artistic Director of
Irish National Opera, proves to be a refreshing undertaking: it demonstrates that even in a
phase of retreat, things can move forward artistically. (Stefan Ender, 19.1.2021)
https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000123394589/kurzopern-gegen-die-krise-20-shots-ofopera-ueber-plastik

NMZ (Germany) – Roland H. Dippel
Lockdown crises and bruises: Irish National Opera’s “20 Shots of Opera”
one of the most remarkable productions of international
music theatre during the two lockdowns
“20 Shots of Opera” is one of the most remarkable productions of
international music theatre during the two lockdowns: 20 mini-operas with
challenging subjects available as videos on demand. The emotional and
probing opera clips of Irish National Opera were created with a total of
160 participants in autumn 2020.
Submenus on the website offer blocks on the topics “political", “life and death”, “drama” and
“relationships”, with a field for “keyword research” above them. The documentary character is
deliberate, with the factual coolness and artful design heightening the emotiveness further.
Unattractive phenomena of civilisation are portrayed, but also challenges, fears and complaints
about essential failings. Mostly, however, the playing time is too short for a constructive solution.
This pessimism is expressed with impressive dramatic and cinematic variety.
The amazing thing about these 20 works, commissioned by Irish National Opera, is not only how
much action and thoughtfulness can be packed into a vocal piece with a mini orchestra lasting a
maximum of nine minutes, but also the variety of subjects and their realisation. Generally, to
achieve this, the cameras fulfil an effective dramaturgical function.
Always at the centre are people who are questioning, distraught, attacked by feelings, perplexed.
But only three of the operas are dealing with Covid-19 explicitly: a woman suffering from the
disease moans, sighs and stammers until a plastic sheath encases her. The camera hangs above
her body on the mobile hospital bed. In “Erth upon Erth”, composer Andrew Milton used the
verses from the “Allegory of Death” mural in the Guild Chapel in Stratford-upon-Avon. Jenn
Kirby’s “Dichotomies of Lockdown” shows in seven snapshots the relationship dynamics of a

couple in isolation. First, she and he observe a worm on an apple, then they reach for disinfectant.
They also use it to sterilise their small garden plot. The couple moves apart (not entirely
involuntarily) and rant against those who do not follow public regulations as closely as they do.
The rest of the mini-marital drama is silence, because they both turn away from each other to
concentrate all the more on their smartphones.
The apple is an important symbol anyway: in “Through and Through”, Peter Fahey adapted the
fairy tale of The Juniper Tree into a retro-gothic nightmare scene for soprano. Blood runs down a
woman’s leg. In Irene Buckley and Jessica Traynor’s “Ghost Apple”, a scientist in the lab
diagnoses connections between the penetration of the entire ecosystem by plastic particles and the
phenomenon of ghost apples. Of course, the silver Apple logo on her computer is clearly visible.
The inevitable climate catastrophe and the powerlessness of the individual are at the sober end of
this science opera. A songful tonal language in the tradition of Britten that accentuates the text
contrasts with the content.
Like “Through and Through”, several other operas simultaneously address a number of collective
social ulcers. An attitude that is often distinguished prevents them from slipping into personal
consternation kitsch. That, too, is an achievement: the never overheated, yet always concise
portrayal of direct and indirect bruising caused by the pandemic.
These “20 Shots of Opera” demonstrate a multi-perspective breadth. At the same time, this cycle
marks the further development of opera as an art form. Since Darius Milhaud’s three ‘Opéra
Minutes’, mini-formats are no longer entirely unusual. Experiments with new short forms in
specific physical and virtual locations range from Boris Blacher’s ‘Abstract Opera no. 1’ to
Menotti’s television opera ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors’ and Mauricio Kagel to Alexander
Strauch’s shop window/contact ad performance ‘From the Inside Out’. “20 Shots of Opera” is
music theatre’s breakthrough into a dramaturgically functionalised digital world. Arguably a
large part of the pieces would lose out in a physical theatrical realisation, because stage and film
timing are different.
“Glaoch” by Linda Buckley and Doireann Ní Ghríofa is staged as a Facetime conversation
between two young women who lament the loss of physical communication during Covid-19.
The leaps of thought in their conversation, which can also be heard in the composition, show how
engaging without disruption with one’s interlocutor and topic is made more difficult not only by
the technical aids. Multitasking inhibits undisturbed attention and amplifies the longing for
human closeness. In Robert Coleman’s “The Colour Green”, the dream of a life in the
countryside is counteracted by an animated film that exaggerates, and thus ironises, this beautiful
illusion.
In a second viewing of “20 Shots of Opera”, the scenically poignant music again moves
somewhat into the background. The composers are all masters of their trade and they created
appropriate and varied scores for their texts, which were written in close collaboration with the
production management. It is not their fault that the visualisation takes up the lion’s share of the
attention. It is striking that in hardly any of the scores are there any repetitive phrases or melody
repetitions. Sustained tempi usually seem like stylised extraneous elements in the visual
realisation. The digital experiment was also successful because the scores stand out from the
often graphic narratives of conventional film music, yet still seem playful. Last but not least, this
entirely successful production impresses by proving the efficiency of an opera company in what
is (still?) an unusual field of work.
https://www.nmz.de/online/lockdown-krisen-und-blessuren-20-shots-of-opera-der-irishnational-opera

FAZ – Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung
– Robert Jungwirth
Irish National Opera is putting twenty new Covid-19 short operas online
in one go: an impressive creative statement about and against the
cultural restrictions of this terrible pandemic – and a pleasure to watch.
The scenery is extremely reduced. In a white room, a female singer and a male singer sit
opposite each other at a long white table on which is arranged lots of disinfectant. The table
can be extended between the two, depending on distancing rules. Singing to minimal music à
la Philip Glass, the two explain terms to which we have become accustomed, such as
superspreader or R number. “Dichotomies of Lockdown” is what Jenn Kirby calls her short
opera, in which she addresses the various stages and effects of lockdown.
Hannah Peel, by contrast, has composed a romance in Covid-19 times. Sam and Andi have
met on a video platform during lockdown. Now, for the first time, they meet in reality. Can
there even be such a thing as romance in Covid-19 times? Their date is influenced by many
uncertainties, even more so than in a life free of Covid-19. For their first touch, they wear
gloves. And yet one hears catchy, melodious music. Grand opera on a small scale under
pandemic conditions: two female singers, four instruments, performed on the main stage of
the Gaiety Theatre in a park setting, with leaves on the stage floor; duration, eight minutes.
Hannah Peel and Jenn Kirby are two of the twenty composers who composed a short opera
for the “20 Shots of Opera” project of the Irish National Opera in Dublin (INO). The
specifications were six to eight minutes and a small cast of both singers and musicians. The
commissions were awarded by the INO to well-known and lesser-known composers from
Ireland.

Effects of a change in communication
The idea for this short-opera project came from the Artistic Director of Irish National Opera,
Fergus Sheil. After realising that the planned new production of Rossini’s “William Tell”
could not happen because of Covid-19, he got the idea of commissioning twenty short operas,
he says. “It was to be as audacious a project as the originally planned production. One that
would harness the talents of just as many people and have the same degree of artistic
expression. Although internationally Ireland is not a major player in the field of opera
production, we do have many composers who are very interested in new opera and who have
also produced some remarkable works.”
A total of 165 people were involved in these twenty short operas, but in small groups of no
more than ten to fifteen people. The operas didn’t have to address the pandemic, but they
were to deal with contemporary society. Even so, many of the operas are about the pandemic;
they deal with lockdown experiences, coping with distance and isolation, and the effects of
our changed ways of communication.
Precisely because they are so short
In “Touch” by Karen Power, two people in two separate illuminated spaces sing in syllables
and speech fragments about the impossibility of meeting and understanding each other,
accompanied by noisy music for small ensemble that underscores the claustrophobic
atmosphere. In contrast, “Glaoch” by Linda Buckley is an intense lament for soprano and
mezzo-soprano about what is lost when we can only communicate with each other via
screens. The (singing) actors are shown in video conferences on their mobile phones and in
their previous, now lost, real lives.
But topics such as climate change and environmental pollution are also represented. The
opera “Dust” by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, for example, is about the extinction of
species, “Ghost Apples” by Irene Buckley about the littering of our earth. These are musical
dystopias that, because they are so short, deliver a forceful punch – nothing here is flogged to
death operatically.
A grotesquely comic aria of frenzy for tenor solo
The twenty short operas – mostly no longer than an aria by George Frideric Handel – were
performed and filmed one after the other in various locations in the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin.
Video designers were hired specifically for the cinematic production. The results are
extremely exciting and vary greatly in their aesthetics; they certainly offer new directions in
the aesthetics of opera, such as the animated opera “Verballing” by David Coonan, which
explores the question of how a truthful answer and the truth differ from each other.
Not everything that the twenty composers present in this kaleidoscope of minute operas is
serious and sad. Gerald Barry, for example, has composed a grotesquely comic aria of frenzy
about housekeeping: instead of a “frenzy over the lost penny”, it is about a frenzy over a lost
stocking. Beethoven, working himself up into a fever of real paranoia, speaks of his
Golgotha. Gavan Ring sings with impressive hysteria in his voice.

Consistently outstanding to amazing
Conor Mitchell’s “Message for Marty” is also wacky and funny. Marty has left Jackie,
whereupon Jackie’s sister bawls the culprit out in an aria of insults over a video call. The
viewer sees the accusation filmed on her own mobile phone, while her sister Jackie sits
despairing in a corner on the floor and tears up photo albums. The trash aesthetic with
leopard waistcoat, garishly made-up face and equally garish fingernails is true to style and
wonderfully funny. The cursing of the engagement ring is musically reminiscent of Wagner’s
“Ring”; and, likewise, what is sung is highly artificial and demanding. Here, as in all twenty
operas, the vocal and instrumental level of the performers is consistently outstanding to
amazing. Indeed, it is a splendid performance by an opera company that, so far, has barely
been on our radar.
“20 Shots of Opera” premiered online at the end of December and since then has been
available to view on the opera’s website free of charge: www.irishnationalopera.ie The result
is an impressive creative statement about, and against, the cultural restrictions of this terrible
pandemic. But it is also a pleasure.
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buehne-und-konzert/die-irish-national-opera-stellt-20-
corona-kurzopern-ins-netz-17130203.html?GEPC=s3

RONDO
A year ago, when the digital concert established itself increasingly as the only option, it
also triggered a learning process. After all, not all opera houses and concert halls were
prepared for expansion into the world of the internet. While in the early months, the
visibility of one’s own institution was the main focus and social media platforms were
filled with all kinds of videos and other material produced at home, formats developed
specifically for the digital realm increasingly replaced a deluge of offers. If you view
the crisis as an opportunity, the latter also lies in the new formats that can emerge
from the interplay of analogue and digital. For in addition to a video-recorded opera
evening, the internet offers new aesthetic possibilities. A fine example of music theatre
conceived in analogue terms but produced digitally now arrives from Ireland.
With “20 Shots of Opera”, Irish National Opera is following a trend towards shorter
online formats, offering a wealth of bold musical theatre to browse and explore with
no less than 20 short operas that are musically and thematically diverse, ranging from
biology to Beethoven. Here, there is a quick response to changed production
conditions, and the result is convincing in its creative diversity. May it inspire further
innovation.
https://www.rondomagazin.de

Opernwelt – Roloff Helsey
A Mosaic of Our Time
Irish National Opera defies the Corona break with 20 spirited musical
theatre miniatures
Irish National Opera, like most companies, has had to abandon the 2020/21 season for the
time being. Whether and in what form Tom Johnson’s “Four Note Opera” or Vivaldi’s “Bajazet”,
Puccini’s “Bohème” or Gerald Barry’s “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground” still work out, remains
to be seen. Nobody can afford to stand still at the moment, and moreover, the INO is not yet
established – the company only started in 2018 (OW 6/2018). Artistic Director Fergus Sheil and
Executive Director Diego Fasciati cannot yet rely on a stable audience base. The only viable
option is to take the bull by the horns. And so, with the support of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra
and numerous sponsors, the team commissioned “20 Shots of Opera” from ten female and ten
male Irish composers.
20 shots, wrote the “Times”, was too much of a good thing, no matter what the material.
However, you don’t have to watch the alphabetically sorted videos all at once, you can listen to
them according to your mood and stamina, randomly and bit by bit. Gerald Barry leads off with
some of Beethoven’s letters to Nannette Streicher, imitating line breaks with mid-word pauses
in the tenor recitation and letting a tuba honk laconic punctuation here and there. In this and in
the choice of material – it is all about banalities, such as a pair of stockings lost in the laundry –
Barry’s characteristic humour is discernible, but one waits in vain for his well-known brilliance.

Corona also plays a role, of course. While “Dichotomies of Lockdown” rolls out clichés, Linda
Buckley and Doireann Ní Ghríofa succeed in capturing poetically the loneliness of digitally
reduced relationships with video-telephony optics and whispering string tones in “Glaoch’, a
work in Irish. “Close” by Hannah Peel and Stella Feehily tells the story of two women who, on
their first date, have to navigate the mined territory between the desire for closeness and the
need for distance. A neighbour bumbling on the violin provides melodic wit, the distance
guessing rhythmic wit. There is counting as in a duel: “One, two, three, four ... ten feet.” Then
only eight. Then six – until there is contact. With a light touch, the authors make the lesbian
couple live through a universal experience: the awkwardly sweet embarrassment of the first
date.
All the pieces were recorded at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre, where the INO usually performs. While
“Close” relies on classical stage optics, other works explore cinematic possibilities. “The Colour
Green” (sound: Robert Coleman, words: Mark Boyle), for example, has little to do with opera in
a strict sense or music theatre in the broader sense. There is very little singing here; instead, the
work is done through musically edited, animated drawings. Nevertheless, this contribution is
one of the most successful and unconventional of the series: a minimalist meditation on writing
by hand and how it changes one’s thinking, on sleeping problems and collecting herbs in the
garden. One’s own home as horizon, cosiness as hardship: this, too, is a pandemic experience.
Of the three works dealing with environmental destruction, only one makes a lasting
impression: “Dust” by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly comes in the form of an Irish folk ballad,
complete with the usual topoi of nature. Except that mezzo Michelle O’Rourke sings of a
landscape she has never experienced, with a stoic expression and a majestically rich tone: “I
have not seen the birds that fly. I have not seen the fish that swim.”
The favourite topic, however, is death. Indeed, there is a Corona body bag, but also a drowning
horse, a shipwreck, a love murder. There is an entertaining comedy in three two-minute acts:
“The Patient Woman” by Conor Linehan and Louis Lovett about an inept god in white. In Alex
Dowling and Mark O’Halloran’s fragile and tender monodrama “Her Name”, a choirboy (Seán
Hayden) at boarding school remembers his deceased mother. In “The Gift” by Evangelia Rigaki
(music) and Marina Carr (lyrics), a whole life unfolds in a few short minutes: An old man (Seán
McGinley) waits in the hospice for his daughter (Doreen Curran), whom he has not seen for
many years. The bed, which had been stood on its foot during filming, duly appears horizontal in
the film – the force of gravity permanently suspended captures intriguingly the state of
uncertainty at the end of life.
Would fewer, more substantial works have been better? No. Sentence by sentence, note by note,
a mosaic of this exceptional time is pieced together here: more multi-faceted, more complete
than two or three artists alone could ever have managed.
___ Wiebke Roloff Halsey

OPER! – Roland H Dippel
Offers innovative alternative possibilities

https://www.oper-magazin.de/leseproben/20-shots/