Trade and Mary Motorhead programme book 2024

IRISH NATIONAL OPERA
PRINCIPAL FUNDER
A CO-PRODUCTION WITH
BETH MORRISON
PROJECTS AND TRINITY
CHURCH WALL STREET
EMMA O’HALLORAN b. 1985
MARY
MOTORHEAD
2019
MONODRAMA FOR LYRIC MEZZO-SOPRANO AND AMPLIFIED
CHAMBER ENSEMBLE
Libretto by Emma O’Halloran, adapted from a play by Mark O’Halloran.
Commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects.
First Performance, National Sawdust, Brooklyn (NY), 20 February 2019.
First Irish Performance, Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny, 8 August 2024.
TRADE
2022
OPERA FOR BARITONE, TENOR, AND AMPLIFIED
CHAMBER ENSEMBLE
Libretto by Mark O’Halloran.
Co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, Irish National Opera, Trinity Church Wall
Street, and Barry Sanders in honor of Nancy Sanders for her birthday.
First Performance, Abrons Arts Center, New York, 7 January 2023.
First Irish Performance, Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny, 8 August 2024.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Artane School of Music, Project Arts Centre,
Kilkenny Arts Festival, Watergate Theatre and
Dublin Theatre Festival.
#TradeMaryMotorhead
SUNG IN ENGLISH
Combined running time 2 hours with interval.
Trade and Mary Motorhead were developed by Beth Morrison Projects.
European premiere co-presented by Kilkenny Arts Festival.
PERFORMANCES 2024
Thursday 8 August Watergate Theatre Kilkenny AS PART OF KILKENNY ARTS FESTIVAL
Friday 9 August Watergate Theatre Kilkenny
Saturday 10 August Watergate Theatre Kilkenny
Sunday 11 August Watergate Theatre Kilkenny
Friday 11 October Pavilion Theatre Dún Laoghaire AS PART OF DUBLIN THEATRE FESTIVAL
Saturday 12 October Pavilion Theatre Dún Laoghaire
Sunday 13 October Pavilion Theatre Dún Laoghaire
Wednesday 16 October Cork Opera House Cork
Saturday 19 October Siamsa Tíre Tralee
Wednesday 23 October Glór Ennis
Saturday 26 October Solstice Arts Centre Navan
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1
OCTOBER
2024
BEATRICE
Berlioz
& BENEDICT
J. Strauss
2024–2025
FOR BOOKING AND MORE
INFORMATION SEE
irishnationalopera.ie
1–23
FEBRUARY
2025
11–26
OCTOBER
2024
Verdi
Emma O’Halloran & Mark O’Halloran
Wagner
23–29
MARCH
2025
25–31
MAY
2025
8–11
AUGUST
2024
1–7
DECEMBER
2024
Donizetti
4 & 7
JUNE
2025
SLICES OF
CONTEMPORARY LIFE
FERGUS SHEIL
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
In 2019 I saw a video of Emma O’Halloran’s opera Mary Motorhead
which had been given its premiere at National Sawdust in New York.
It was brilliantly performed by Naomi Louisa O’Connell, and both
the confidence and clarity of the composition and the compelling
narrative of Mark O’Halloran’s text were striking. I was hooked. Beth
Morrison Projects were responsible for the premiere, and together
we developed the idea of pairing this 30-minute work with a newlycommissioned
longer opera, Trade. Tonight’s production of the
resulting double bill was first seen at New York’s Prototype festival
in January 2023 and at Los Angeles Opera the following April.
Producing new operas is artistically exciting, but also complex and
costly. Working with a major international partner or partners brings
great benefits. It’s not just about sharing the burden of delivering the
resources that are required. But all the companies involved get to
expand the reach of the production to wider international audiences.
I was thrilled to see this double-bill in New York and Los Angeles,
particularly with so many Irish artists being celebrated at such a high
level. Now I’m even more excited to present the opera to audiences in
Kilkenny, Dún Laoghaire, Cork, Tralee, Ennis and Navan. A big thank
you to our partners at Kilkenny Arts Festival, Dublin Theatre Festival
and all the individual venues for making this possible.
Emma and Mark O’Halloran have chosen to focus on carefully-drawn
characters from contemporary life. The characters are individuals
who face daunting challenges, and throughout both operas we get a
chance to share a moment in their life journeys. As in Puccini, we meet
underdogs whose unenviable situations are projected onto the great
and heart-breaking canvas that is opera. The Los Angeles Times’s Mark
Swed put it well when he wrote of tonight’s production, “Rarely, if ever,
does every element – score, text, singers, instrumentalists, conductor,
director, sets, costumes, lighting, sound design – all come together.
This is that rarity.” Enjoy!
The Elixir of Love
05

WAITING FOR
RIGOLETTO
TODAY’S MUSIC,
TODAY’S WORLD
“We are particularly excited about
INO’s new production of Rigoletto,
which features the production, design
and conducting team that brought us
a mesmerising William Tell in 2022.
Rigoletto is a real classic of the Italian
repertoire with a story of intense human
passions set to the most beautiful,
heartfelt and memorable music. Verdi
demands superb singing and the casting
for Rigoletto promises to provide just
that. It’s definitely a show not to miss.”
JO AND BRENDAN SHEEHY INO MEMBERS
“Rigoletto functions like a lost illusion,
where the hopes and dreams of the
characters clash with a tragic reality,
creating a waking nightmare. It is an
extraordinary opportunity to bring
the complex characters to life. The
powerful crescendo of Verdi’s music
shines brightest as it approaches
its end, like a bulb glowing intensely
before it fades. It’s a score where
each note makes me want to dance,
knowing it’s a dangerous dance on a
volcano. The opera works like a party
with a tragic ending; once started, it
leads inevitably to tragedy, almost like
an unstoppable hallucination.”
JULIAN CHAVEZ, DIRECTOR
“Fathers and daughters are a common
vein in Verdi’s operas but in Rigoletto
this relationship is the very core of
the opera. It’s the thing that haunts
me most. Gilda gives Rigoletto’s life
meaning. His love for her is absolute.
One of my favourite moments is
when Rigoletto is brooding on the
curse Monterone has placed on
him and Gilda bursts in and the
orchestra plays music of the utmost
excitement. She seems overjoyed to
see him. Rigoletto is over-protective
and vengeful and his actions have
catastrophic consequences and it
would be a mistake to take parenting
advice from him. But the power of
the father/daughter love touches me
deeply and I can’t wait to explore it.
FERGUS SHEIL CONDUCTOR
DECEMBER 2024
BORD GÁIS ENERGY THEATRE, DUBLIN
SUN 1, TUE 3, THUR 5 & SAT 7 DEC
BOOKING on www.irishnationalopera.ie
DIEGO FASCIATI
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
A new style of opera emerged in Italy in the second half of the 19th
century. Inspired and influenced by a literary movement focused on
“realism”, composers embraced stories of everyday contemporary
life. Librettists turned to the experiences of the working classes, the
poor, peasants and outcasts. The musical style evolved to match
the subject matter. Composers eschewed the highly ornamented
melodies of the bel canto period and the beautiful lyrical lines of
the romantic movement. Instead they sought to write music that
would communicate the emotional state of their characters with
raw immediacy. This was the verismo movement, and the Italian
word has been adopted into English to describe the true-to-life and
realist goals of the composers. Some of the best and most famous
examples include Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana (Rustic chivalry,
1890), dealing with rural life in Sicily, and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci
(Clowns, 1892), which follows the misadventures of a travelling
theatre troupe.
The work of writer and actor Mark O’Halloran is often concerned
with the lives of outsiders. People who are invisible to society. Men
and women whose circumstances have pushed them to the edge.
Individuals with shattered lives, people who are just different. His
seminal film Adam & Paul, directed by Lenny Abrahamson and
starring the writer himself as Adam, is an unflinching yet gentle
portrayal of a day in the life of two drug addicts. His TV series
Prosperity portrays the lives of a young single mother, a boy with a
stutter, a middle-aged man whose life is falling apart and an asylum
seeker who works nights as a cleaner. These characters, and
those in Mary Motorhead and Trade, are cut from the same cloth
as verismo. Emma O’Halloran is an exciting new creative voice in
opera. Her musical language conveys character and situation with
a sense of immediacy, urgency and a rawness of emotion. A kind of
verismo for the times we live in.
06
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Image: Sinéad Campbell Wallace in INO’s 2024 production of Salome
Photo: Patricio Cassinoni.
07

COMPOSER’S NOTE
EMMA 0’HALLORAN
I have always been fascinated by people. Observing them,
figuring out what makes them tick. Before I stepped into
the world of music composition, I studied psychology and
anthropology, and I loved spending my time thinking about
who people are and why they do things. In a way, I was
drawn to music as a means of exploring these complicated
emotions that I sometimes had trouble capturing in words.
In 2018, as part of the Beth Morrison Projects Next
Generation competition, I adapted my uncle’s play Mary
Motorhead into a monodrama, and through that process
I began to see that Mark was doing with words what I
was doing with music. Mark’s work explores people’s
inner worlds, the often unseen events in people’s lives
that shape them and make them who they are. There is
a beautiful economy in his use of language – if a line of
text can be conveyed through a look or a gesture, it’s not
needed. His words leave space for the music, for my music,
to capture all the complex and messy feelings of what it is
to be alive.
The story of Mary Motorhead is about a woman in Mountjoy
prison serving an eighteen-year sentence for a violent
crime. History is invention, she tells us, a made-up story
based on sometimes scant knowledge of the available
facts. Each of us has a known history and a secret one. Our
secret history, she explains, is made up “of all the small
things that happened in your life.” This is the history that
really happened – the one going on inside – something
that regular history, or reportage, or maybe representation,
can never really know. So, Mary invites us to hear her
secret history – the disappointments and betrayals that
shaped her life in the Irish midlands – in the hope that it
may shine some light upon the darkness of her actions.
When Mark agreed to adapt his play, TRADE, into an opera,
I knew he would make something special. In TRADE, we
witness an encounter between two men in a guestroom
in North Dublin. The men are separated by age but not
by much else. They are both fathers, they are both in
heterosexual relationships, they are both from working class
backgrounds, and they both share a secret – the Older Man
visits the Younger Man from time to time to pay him for sex.
This particular encounter, however, is different and both
men are about to have a conversation unlike anything
they’ve ever had before.
I wrote the majority of this opera during the pandemic
lockdowns in Ireland and this text grew roots and lived
inside me. I began to see these two men as mirrors for
each other, reflecting back aspects of themselves that
they may or may not want to see. Slowly, the music began
to do that too. Ideas repeat themselves but are refracted
back and transformed in various ways over the course of
the encounter. I think, in writing this opera, I too have been
transformed. I spent every day for over a year thinking that,
deep down, all we want in this life is to be seen and loved
and accepted for who we are. If even one person resonates
with that after seeing this show, I’ve done my job.
10
11

SECRET HISTORIES
In two small rooms, not far apart on Dublin’s northside, we watch secret
histories unfold. While Mary Motorhead serves time in Mountjoy prison
for stabbing her husband, she reflects on moments in her life growing up
in the flatness of the midlands that brought her to this point. In Trade, two
Dublin men, one aged eighteen, one older, who both think of themselves
as heterosexual and are both fathers, meet in a guesthouse for the older
to pay the younger for sex, and their secret histories unspool in the dark
air of a closed room.
I first worked with Mark O’Halloran on the first production of Trade as a
play, which we staged for small audiences up close in a guest house in the
north inner city as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2011. He brings
infinite humanity and a remarkable ear for character and language to his
depictions of quiet lives lived on the edges of society. Emma O’Halloran’s
unique composition approach draws the inner and outer lives of these
characters in technicolour, attuned to the musicality of Irish speech and
the way spaces pulse with atmosphere around and between characters.
These two operas differ in form: Mary Motorhead is a direct address to
the audience where Mary confronts us with her lived experience and
challenges us to empathise with someone we would most likely cross the
street to avoid. Trade functions as fourth wall realism, unfolding in real time,
the stage acting as a window into lives cracked open with words and music.
It’s been a great adventure working on these pieces, firstly in New York
and Los Angeles in 2023, and now at home in Ireland, and we’re proud to
give you the opportunity to discover them.
TOM CREED
DIRECTOR OF TRADE/MARY MOTORHEAD
Image: Tom Creed
Photography: Ste Murray
12
13

THE LIBRETTIST’S
EXPERIENCE
Mark O’Halloran on writing his first two librettos.
HAS OPERA HAD MUCH OF A PLACE IN YOUR LIFE?
I’m not what they’d call an opera queen. I’m not a great goer
to the opera, but I do like classical music. Maria Callas has
always had a massive place in my heart and I’ve listened to all
of those recordings, etc. I certainly never had any ambitions
towards writing for opera. I’d go to operas occasionally, but it
wasn’t central to my cultural life.
WHEN YOU DID GO, HOW DID YOU FIND YOURSELF
REACTING TO IT?
Well, it was one I saw once in America. It was a version of
Janáček’s Jenůfa, done by two French guys who direct together,
Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser, at Spoleto in 1998. And there
was an Irish singer in it, Limerick soprano Suzanne Murphy,
who played the grandmother. It was an absolutely extraordinary
production. I was absolutely, utterly blown away by it. I thought
the drama in it was incredible. The staging was divine. That had
a big impact on me. They had this massive rake on the stage
and people standing as if clinging to the earth. It was really
mind blowing. And I thought the music was pretty amazing as
well. I haven’t seen a huge amount, you know, being in Ireland
sometimes it’s difficult to see, especially when I was growing up.
HOW DID THE COLLABORATION COME ABOUT?
Well, Emma is my niece, and she had been over studying in the
United States and then she had entered this competition with
the Prototype Festival and Beth Morrison. She had come to see
a play that I had written years and years and
years ago that was staged as a lunchtime thing
in Bewley’s called Mary Motorhead. She really
liked it as a proposition and she was trying
to write a mono opera. I didn’t really have a
huge input. I gave her the permission to take
the material and do what she wished with it. I
was really taken with what she did. I thought
the music was incredible.
She won that competition and then Beth
wanted to know what she wanted to do as her
winning piece. She asked me whether she
could do my play Trade, which she had seen
also in Dublin. I was fully involved in that. I
wrote the libretto for it, which was a great
learning curve.
I write dialogue. When I’m writing straight
plays and stuff there tends to be not massive
amounts of dialogue. So it lent itself to
adapting easier than others. But we went
through a process together so, like, that’s
where it came from. I suppose the family
connection was something.
WAS EMMA THE BOSS?
I work in the film industry and I felt it was
very much the same sort of relationship as
I would have with a director if I was writing
a screenplay. Nobody knows who the
screenwriter is, you know. So that’s okay. She
was very generous about it. I was very unsure.
I mean I ran around the first day said, “Hey,
does this have to rhyme?” And she was like,
“No.” I thought, “Okay. Thank God for that.”
I wrote the libretto first and then she went
and wrote the music. She would just say
sometimes, I think there’s too much dialogue
here, is there any way we can take that down,
and I was like, sure, sure, sure. Beth was
there to help and Tom Creed was involved
from early on as a sort of advisor. It was a very
easy process. Emma’s not a diva you know.
She goes around in the real world and she
also just wrote this music that completely
naturally bowled me over. I was like, where
did this come from? It’s very intense, and yet
it seems also to be very truthful. It’s not metadramatising,
if that’s a word. The material I
thought was really brilliantly judged from her.
DID YOU FIND YOURSELF DISAGREEING
ABOUT ANYTHING?
In the same way as you work with a director,
you sometimes say to them, “Look, if we lose
that line, we’re going to lose something else
along the way so, so maybe we can think
about that. If you feel there’s too much there
15

Image: Mark O’Halloran
Photography: Pete Copeland
we can find a way to work it.” But I think it’s
worth fighting for a line sometimes. In a play
or in a screenplay, the dialogue holds the
story up, and in an opera, the music holds
the story up. The dialogue and the lyrics are
some kind of a subtle architecture within the
work but, really, the heavy lifting is done by
the music. What I felt was that the text, the
story and the characters were an inspiration
for her to write this music that she wrote.
And she understood the idea that within the
play itself there are quite a lot of silences.
How do you mediate silence with music?
Or how do you demonstrate it with music?
Or how do you show the inner tickings of a
character’s brain as they’re trying to figure
out what to say next to somebody in an
awkward fashion? She just did gloriously. I
was delighted that that had happened. I had
no problems with any of it. This was a really
easy gig for me.
We had quite a good amount of time working
on the libretto itself over and back. It was
during lockdown. So there was a lot of time.
And then, because of the nature of the
competition and the budget involved and all of
that, there wasn’t a lot of time to fuck around.
You did what you got to do, and I think that is
a good thing.
HAS THE MUSIC CHANGED IN ANY WAY
THE WORLD THAT YOU HAD ORIGINALLY
CREATED IN THOSE TWO WORKS?
Trade was originally done as a site-specific
work with the Dublin Theatre Festival. We
did it in a very large room in a B&B on North
Denmark Street, with a little bank of seats for
30 people, and we did it twice or three times
a day or something like that. We recreated
this room as the set for the opera. But it just
felt like a very different thing. I mean, I know
it was in a theatre and all of that, but it felt
like a very different thing. It felt heightened
as an opera. It was incredibly intense in a
really amazing way. At times the pressure
inside the characters felt like as if it blew into
incredible musical sequences that really I
was absolutely and utterly thrilled with.
WHAT WAS THE GREATEST SURPRISE
ABOUT THE COLLABORATION?
I think the ease of it actually, to be honest
with you. I think we did two or three drafts of
the libretto. Once that was agreed, I would
get an occasional email about this word or
that word. When I was sent a copy of the
music it was really lovely. I was just sitting
around in my room waiting for the world to
come back.
Going over to see the singers on the stage
was quite exceptional. Seeing Naomi in
Mary Motorhead and the two boys in Trade.
The work that they do is just incredible. I’m
physically amazed by the sound. Naomi is a
great actor as well as this phenomenal singer.
She really inhabits a role. The two boys, you
know, great actors as well. It felt like we had
made something like kitchen sink opera
which is really down my street. I suppose
that’s what I was hoping for.
HAS THE EXPERIENCE LEFT YOU WITH
AN APPETITE FOR MORE?
Yeah, well myself and Emma are embarking
on a new and fuller project at the moment
that we’re hoping to get motoring at the end
of this year. I’m really looking forward to that.
Perhaps premiere it over in America as well
and see where we go from there. So that’s in
train. I’m a librettist now.
The next thing is going to be based on a play
that I wrote a couple of years ago called
Conversations After Sex. And it’s a year in the
life of a woman putting herself back together
after the loss of a partner. There’s a cast of
about eight or ten, I think. It’s conversations
she has with strangers she has picked up
from Tinder or in bars as she deals with the
intense loss of a partner to suicide. It’s just
conversations with complete strangers set
over a year as she tries to get her life together
again. We’ll see how it works. Emma is really
excited by it, I think, so that’s great.
IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL DERVAN
16
17

BEING EMMA O’HALLORAN
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER FROM THE
FIRST OPERA YOU WENT TO?
I think the first opera that I went to was
Janáček’s Jenůfa. It was in the Czech Republic,
and it was part of a university trip I went on
when I was doing my undergrad in Maynooth.
What I remember more than anything else was
the staging. It was just breathtaking. There was
a scene where the wall had furniture all over it
and, at one point, everything just dropped to
the floor and smashed. I thought, Wow! I just
was so amazed. But, honestly, I don’t think I
was very aware of opera until four or five years
ago. So when I went to Jenůfa, I didn’t know
what to expect.
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER FROM THE
FIRST OPERA YOU WERE INVOLVED IN?
The first opera that I was involved in was Mary
Motorhead. What impressed me was the first
reading, the workshop where everybody got
together. It was just so exciting to be in a room
with different creative people who had their
own perspectives. You know, like a lighting
designer and what they were interested in,
a director and what they wanted to show an
audience, and how we all eventually arrived at
a shared vision.
Image: Emma O’Halloran
Photography: Alex Dowling
That first workshop was sort of put together
on a shoestring. We met maybe three or
four days before the work was going to be
presented as a sort of semi-staged version.
The conversations happened in the room
as the music was being rehearsed and
performed. So there was an intensity to it as
well. It was an amazing experience because
I had written the role of Mary Motorhead for
Naomi Louisa O’Connell. I was looking for a
singer, an Irish singer in New York, because
I was living in the States at the time. And
someone told me to check out Naomi’s work
and, seeing her do what she does, I had a fair
idea of what it would sound like.
We had a few conversations as I was writing
the piece and I asked her if there were things
that she really liked to do, things that she
could do that other people can’t do. Beyond
opera, she also has a background in cabaret
and she told me that she can move very
quickly from sung text to spoken word to
sung text. So I put that in, and seeing her
really bring the role off the page was magical.
There’s an element of collaboration and trust
and it makes the singer more comfortable.
And I think it results in better music as well.
WHAT WAS THE BEST OPERA-RELATED
ADVICE YOU EVER GOT?
I think it’s that if anything can be conveyed
through a look or a gesture, or absorbed
through the music, you don’t need those
words. So cut them.
WHAT IS THE MOST ANNOYING
MISCONCEPTION ABOUT OPERA?
You know, I’m not sure if I have been
immersed in enough opera in terms of its
traditions to know what’s the most annoying
misconception about it. Honestly, I don’t
know. I think for me, it’s like the most exciting
form of storytelling. I don’t know if other
people have preconceptions about what
that is, but it’s really like having music as the
driving force of a narrative. It can show you
so much about a character’s internal world.
That really excites me. But I think, you know,
for some people it’s the same with theatre.
If people aren’t sure what the rules are, they
might be a little bit afraid to come through
the doors.
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19

Image: Emma O’Halloran
Photography: Alex Dowling
WHAT MOMENT DO YOU MOST LOOK
FORWARD TO WHEN YOU GO TO A
PERFORMANCE OF TRADE/MARY
MOTORHEAD?
I just love watching the singers do what
they do. I think it’s the excitement of saying
hi to everybody before we go on stage.
At this point, it’s been done a couple of
times already. And I know Elaine Kelly, the
conductor, very well. And watching her work
is incredible. She’s able to read the room and
the energy and she knows what she needs to
do, whether she needs to lift the energy of the
musicians or settle them. And you’ll see her
kind of work her magic backstage. And then
you’ll feel the anticipation and excitement
of the singers as they’re ready to go on. So
that’s my favourite part.
WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING
ASPECT OF COMPOSING TRADE/MARY
MOTORHEAD?
Well, when the pieces were composed, I
didn’t know it was going to be a double bill.
When working on Mary Motorhead, I was
aware that it was the longest piece I’d ever
written. So that was terrifying. Just trying
to figure out the pacing and asking myself
would it work? And then you double that
for Trade. And it’s like, again, how will I do
this? So I think with every new opera, is this
an opera? How do I do it? And then you get
through it and on the other side you’re kind
of in disbelief in a way that you’ve done the
thing. You have to take yourself outside of the
critical editor role, just be curious and playful
and do what your gut is telling you to do.
Otherwise you’ll never be able to finish the
pieces, you know.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT
YOUR NEXT OPERA OR OPERAS?
As in what’s happening next? I have some
plans for operas that are in early stages at the
moment. But in terms of whether I would like
to continue writing opera, yes, I would. I think
for me opera is strangely like the form I think
I had been always searching for. For me,
music is a way to make sense of my place in
the world and in relation to people around
me. And it’s about capturing complicated
emotions. And I think with the right libretto,
you can really do a lot with just telling stories
that invite us to examine our own internal
worlds and workings, and hopefully become
more compassionate to others.
I actually read a quote the other day by the
American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with him, but he
was born in the early 1800s. The quote was, “If
we could read the secret history of our enemies,
we should find in each man’s life sorrow and
suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” And I
think that’s what opera is for me.
It’s about having people that are imperfect,
messy, destructive, probably doing bad things.
But they’re not bad people. It’s about shining
a light on the fact that we all have pain and
suffering inside of us and it might make us
act in certain ways. But if we can have more
compassion and understanding towards
each other, maybe we’ll all get along a little
bit better.
IF YOU WEREN’T A COMPOSER, WHAT
MIGHT YOU HAVE BECOME?
I think if I wasn’t a composer, I would do
something maybe in psychology or healing,
like healing modality. So, over the pandemic,
I started getting attuned in Reiki, which is sort
of healing modality that’s like acupuncture,
but without the pins and needles. You can
sort of channel energy through your hands
and kind of help people that way. So that’s
something that I’m kind of interested in
anyway. And the same with psychology. I
read a lot of books about what makes people
tick and why we do the things that we do. So
that would probably be the other route.
IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL DERVAN
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21

Images: Rehearsals for Trade
/Mary Motorhead
Photography: Ste Murray
CAST
MARY MOTORHEAD
Mary Motorhead Naomi Louisa O’Connell Mezzo-Soprano
TRADE
Younger Man Oisín Ó Dálaigh Tenor
Older Man John Molloy Bass-baritone
CREATIVE TEAM
Composer
Librettist
Creative Producer
Conductor
Director
Electronic Sound Design
Set Designer
Lighting Designer
Costume Designer
Sound Designer
Assistant Director
Répétiteur
Répétiteur (electronics)
Emma O’Halloran
Mark O’Halloran
Beth Morrison
Elaine Kelly
Tom Creed
Alex Dowling
Jim Findlay
Christopher Kuhl
Montana Levi Blanco
David Sheppard
Chris Kelly
Aoife Moran
Brian Dungan
26
23

IRISH NATIONAL OPERA ORCHESTRA
PRODUCTION TEAM
Volin
Sarah Sew LEADER
Viola
Joanna Mattrey
Cello
David Edmonds
Flute
Lina Andonovska
Clarinet/bass clarinet
Conor Sheil
Tenor saxophone
Kenneth Edge
Keyboard
Eliza McCarthy
Electric guitar
Barry O’Halpin
PRODUCTION TEAM
Production Manager
Patrick McLaughlin
Director of Production
Beth Morrison Projects
Roderick Murray
LX Programmer
Ilona McCormick
Sound
Kevin McGing
Sound Mixer
Jonathan Green
Production Photography
Ros Kavanagh
Rehearsal Photography
Ste Murray
Rehearsal Videos
Charlie Joe Doherty
Double bass
Malachy Robinson
Percussion
Caitríona Frost
Company Stage Manager
Paula Tierney
Stage Manager
Anne Kyle
Technical Crew
Abraham Allen
Martin Wallace
Garrett Cotter
Pawel Nieworaj
Chief LX
Donal McNinch
Sound Crew
Joey Maguire
Ger Barry
Wigs, Hair & Makeup
Supervisor
Carole Dunne
Costume Supervisor
Sinéad Lawlor
Surtitle Operator
Maeve Sheil
Chris Kelly
Graphic Design
Detail
Promotional Video
Gansee Films
24 25

BIOGRAPHIES
EMMA O’HALLORAN
COMPOSER
MARK O’HALLORAN
LIBRETTIST
ELAINE KELLY
CONDUCTOR
TOM CREED
DIRECTOR
Irish composer Emma O’Halloran is
interested in joy, wonder, hope, and
connection, and her music is driven
by a desire to capture the magic of
what it means to be human. Freely
intertwining acoustic and electronic
music, Emma has written for folk musicians, chamber
ensembles, turntables, laptop orchestra, symphony
orchestra, opera, and theatre, and her work has
been described as “intensely beautiful” (Washington
Post) and “unencumbered, authentic, and joyful”
(I Care If You Listen). Known for her unique ability
to fuse elements of pop, rock, and electronic music
while exploring the colours and textures of acoustic
instruments, her work has found a wide audience
and has been featured at various music festivals such
as Classical NEXT, PODIUM Esslingen, New Music
Dublin, Tokyo’s Born Creative Festival, and Bang
on a Can LOUD Weekend. Additionally, her music
has been performed by Crash Ensemble, Friction
Quartet, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, ensemble
reflektor, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and the National
Symphony Orchestra amongst others. In recent years,
Emma’s passion for storytelling has led her to explore
multidisciplinary projects such as soundwalks and
opera. She has written works for Irish National Opera,
Boston Lyric Opera, Beth Morrison Projects, and her
recent operas, Trade and Mary Motorhead, received
rave reviews from their performances at LA Opera and
New York’s PROTOTYPE Festival with the LA Times
calling her “a kind of modern-day Monteverdi”. Emma
holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton
University and is currently working as a freelance
composer.
Mark O’Halloran is a writer and actor
from the west of Ireland. On screen
he has appeared in numerous
films, most notably as one of the
eponymous heroes in ADAM &
PAUL (which he also wrote), and the
lead role of MP in History’s Future directed by Fiona
Tan. He also appeared in Shane Meadow’s Channel 4
drama, The Virtues, for which he won Best Supporting
Actor at the IFTA Awards 2020. Upcoming projects
include the feature film, The Miracle Club, alongside
Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates, and Laura Linney. He has
appeared in the Oliver Hermanus directed TV drama
Mary & George, playing Sir Francis Bacon alongside
Julianne Moore. Mark has recently appeared in Marina
Carr’s Portia Coughlan at The Almeida Theatre,
London. Writing credits include the films GARAGE and
ADAM & PAUL, the television series PROSPERITY,
Viva, a Spanish language feature set in Havana, Cuba,
and Rialto which premiered at the 2019 Venice Film
Festival. His television work includes Sally Rooney’s
Conversations With Friends. His work has been seen
at Venice, Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Telluride and
Sundance film festivals. For the stage he wrote the
play TRADE, contributed text to the award-winning
LIPPY, co-wrote Beckett’s Room for Dead Centre at
The Gate Theatre. In 2021 he wrote and premiered
two new plays: Conversations After Sex at the Dublin
Theatre Festival, (which won Best New Play at the
Irish Theatre Awards 2022), and a stage adaptation of
Bergman’s The Silence at the Stadsteater in Göteborg,
Sweden. He also wrote the libretto for the opera
adaptation of Trade, composed by Emma O’Halloran,
which premiered at New York’s PROTOTYPE festival
and transferred to LA Opera.
Elaine Kelly was Resident Conductor
and Chorus Director of Irish National
Opera until May 2024. She has
conducted works by Donnacha
Dennehy, David Cooney, Amanda
Feery, Evangelia Rigaki and last
year conducted the operatic world premiere of Emma
O’Halloran and Mark O’Halloran’s Trade and Mary
Motorhead for the PROTOTYPE Festival New York
(January) and LA Opera (April). She conducted nine new
works in INO’s internationally praised 20 Shots of Opera
in 2020 and a nationwide tour of Maxwell Davies’s The
Lighthouse in 2021. She recently conducted Gounod’s
Faust and Mozart’s Così fan tutte (INO) and Richard
Taylor’s Dawn to Dusk: The Moon is Listening (Garsington
Opera, UK). In 2023, she conducted the world premiere
of Benedict Sheehan’s Akathist in Trinity Church Wall
Street, NY, recorded for album release this year. For
INO she has also worked on Rossini’s La Cenerentola,
Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, Puccini’s
La bohème, Strauss’s Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier and
Salome, Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground,
Beethoven’s Fidelio, Bizet’s Carmen, Donizetti’s L’elisir
d’amore and Maria Stuarda, Rossini’s William Tell. She
has worked as assistant conductor with Opéra National
de Bordeaux and Nouvel Opéra Fribourg. Elaine will
conduct Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia with Longborough
Festival Opera in 2025. She has guest appeared with the
National Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra,
Cork Concert Orchestra, Cork Opera House Concert
Orchestra, conducted the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg
and was Music Director of the Dublin Symphony
Orchestra and the University of Limerick Orchestra.
In 2014, Kelly won 1st prize in the inaugural ESB Feis
Ceoil Orchestral Conducting Competition.
Tom has directed Donizetti’s Maria
Stuarda, Vivaldi’s Griselda and
Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann
for Irish National Opera, as well as
Jennifer Walshe’s Libris Solar as part
of 20 Shots of Opera. A specialist in
developing and directing new opera, he directed the
world premiere of Emma O’Halloran’s Trade and Mary
Motorhead (Prototype Festival, New York, and LA Opera),
and world premieres of Michael Gallen’s Elsewhere (Abbey
Theatre and Irish tour), Donnacha Dennehy’s The Hunger
(Abbey Theatre and BAM, New York), Annelies van Parys’s
Private View (winner of the inaugural FEDORA Opera
Prize), and Jürgen Simpson’s air india [redacted] (Turning
Point Ensemble, Vancouver). Other opera productions
include Handel’s Giulio Cesare (Blackwater Valley Opera
Festival), Britten’s Owen Wingrave (Opéra National
de Paris, Opera Collective Ireland), Handel’s Acis and
Galatea, Wolf-Ferrari’s Susanna’s Secret and Poulenc’s
The Human Voice (Opera Theatre Company), Stravinsky’s
Mavra and Walton’s The Bear (Royal Conservatoire
of Scotland), and Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Puccini’s
Suor Angelica, and Stravinsky’s Mavra and Renard (Royal
Irish Academy of Music). He participated in the Opera
Creation Workshop at the 2020 Aix-en-Provence Festival.
Theatre productions include The President (Gate Theatre
and Sydney Theatre Company), The Quare Fellow (Abbey
Theatre), Conversations After Sex (THISISPOPBABY at
Dublin Theatre Festival, Irish Arts Centre, New York, and
Irish tour). He was previously Festival Director of Cork
Midsummer Festival, Theatre and Dance Curator of
Kilkenny Arts Festival and Associate Director of Rough
Magic. He is a member of the Expert Advisory Committee
of Culture Ireland, chair of GAZE Film Festival, and a
board member of The Performing Arts Forum.
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27

BIOGRAPHIES
ALEX DOWLING
ELECTRONIC SOUND DESIGN
JIM FINDLAY
SET DESIGNER
CHRISTOPHER KUHL
LIGHTING DESIGNER
MONTANA LEVI BLANCO
COSTUME DESIGNER
Alex Dowling is an Irish composer
and producer whose work spans
music for acoustic ensembles to
live electronics and opera. Recent
projects include a commission
from Irish National Opera to create
Her Name, a work for boy soprano as part of the 20
Shots of Opera project, and a theatrical collaboration
for There at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. His
album of electronic vocal works, Reality Rounds, was
released on Carrier Records and has been described
as “an enthralling trance of live-processed vocals
and synthesizers” (The Road to Sound). His music
has been performed by ensembles internationally
including the National Symphony Orchestra, Crash
Ensemble, Prism Saxophone Quartet, Orkest De
Ereprijs, Mivos String Quartet, and has been featured
at festivals including Bang on a Can, MATA, and
the Young Composers Meeting, Netherlands. He
has written music for theatre and laptop orchestra,
and his audiovisual installation Bodysnatcher was
exhibited at the Eyebeam Gallery, New York, and
toured many other countries. As part of his sound
design/production work, he created the electronic
music component for Emma O’Halloran and Mark
O’Halloran’s Trade and Mary Motorhead which was
showcased at the PROTOTYPE 2023 festival in New
York and at LA Opera REDCAT. Dowling was recently
named MacDowell Fellow and artist-in-residence at
the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. He has an MPhil
in Music & Media Technology from Trinity College
Dublin and studied composition as a PhD fellow at
Princeton University. He is currently the INO Studio
Composer.
Jim Findlay works across
boundaries as a theatre artist,
visual artist, and filmmaker. His
output includes his original works
Vine of the Dead (2015), Dream
of the Red Chamber (2014),
Botanica (2012) and the direction and design
of David Lang‘s the whisper opera as well as the
unreleased 3D film Botanica. His video installation
in collaboration with Ralph Lemon, Meditation is in
the permanent collection of the Walker Art Center,
Minneapolis. He was a founding member of the
Collapsable Giraffe and in partnership with Radiohole
founded the Collapsable Hole, a multi-disciplinary
artist led performance venue recently relocated to
Manhattan’s West Village. In addition to his work as
an independent artist, he maintains a long career as
a collaborator with many theatre, performance and
music artists including Bang on a Can, Daniel Fish,
Aaron Landsman, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Ridge
Theater, Ralph Lemon, the Wooster Group, Radiohole,
Stew and Heidi Rodewald, and Julia Wolfe. His work
has been seen at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, BAM,
Arena Stage, A.R.T. and over 50 cities internationally.
In 2016 he received a Creative Capital Award for his
project Electric Lucifer and in 2015 he received the
Foundation for Contemporary Art Artist Grant. He was
a MacDowell Colony Fellow in 2012 and 2016. Other
recognition includes two Obie Awards, two Bessie
Awards, two Princess Grace Awards, a Lortel and a
Hewes Awards and residencies at Baryshnikov Arts
Center, UCross, MassMOCA and Mount Tremper Arts.
Christopher Kuhl is an acclaimed
theatre, dance, opera, installation
artist and designer. Kuhl has
developed work which has been
produced and presented at such
venues as Santiago a Mil Chile,
Queer Zagreb, Sydney Festival, Hebbel am Ufer,
Centre Pompidou, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Edinburgh
International Festival, On the Boards, Fusebox
Festival, Walker Arts Center, Sundance Film Festival,
and Santa Fe Opera, among others. Recent work
includes Emma O Halloran’s Trade/Mary Motorhead
(Prototype Festival, LA Opera, REDCAT), Human
Measure (HOME Manchester, Canadian Stage),
Confederates (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), The
Carolyn Bryant Project (REDCAT), Kate Soper’s Voices
from the Killing Jar (Long Beach Opera, Los Angeles
Philharmonic), Donnacha Dennehy’s The Hunger
(Abbey Theatre, BAM), The Object Lesson (New
York Theatre Workshop), Home (BAM), The Institute
of Memory (Under the Radar), Straight White Men
(Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company, The Public
Theatre, Kaai Theater), John Cage Song Books (San
Francisco Symphony, Carnegie Hall), and David T.
Little’s Soldier Songs (Holland Festival). His work has
been recognised with three Bessie Awards, two Los
Angeles Ovation Awards, and the Center Theatre
Group’s Sherwood Award. Kuhl is an Associate
Professor at UC San Diego in the Department of
Theatre and Dance. He is from New Mexico and a
graduate of California Institute of the Arts.
Montana Levi Blanco is a graduate
of the Oberlin Conservatory of
Music (BM Oboe Performance),
Oberlin College (BA History), Brown
University (MA Public Humanities),
and the Yale School of Drama (MFA
Design). Prior to attending Yale, he was the Robert L.
Tobin Curatorial Intern at the McNay Art Museum in
San Antonio, Texas. His projects for 2022 include The
Skin of Our Teeth and A Strange Loop, both opening
on Broadway in April 2022; Emma O’Halloran’s Trade/
Mary Motorhead for Irish National Opera; sandblasted
by Charly Evon Simpson and White Girl In Danger by
Michael R. Jackson at the Vineyard Theatre; (February
2022); ‘Daddy’ by Jeremy O. Harris at the Almeida
Theatre in London; Epiphany by Brian Watkins at
LCT/Mitzi Newhouse; Mother Russia by Lauren
Yee, at La Jolla Playhouse; and Grass by Branden
Jacobs-Jenkins at Signature Theatre. Opera credits
include Wayne Shorter’s Iphigenia (Kennedy Center),
Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (Houston Grand
Opera) and Puccini’s La rondine (Minnesota Opera).
Selected Off-Broadway credits include Fairview, Is
God Is (SOHO REP); Ain’t No Mo’ (Public); The House
That Will Not Stand, Red Speedo (New York Theatre
Workshop); Fabulation, The Death of the Last Black
Man (Signature); and Fefu and Her Friends (Theatre
For a New Audience). In addition to the Tony Award,
Blanco has received the Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel,
Henry Hewes, and Obie Awards.
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29

BIOGRAPHIES
DAVID SHEPPARD
SOUND DESIGNER
CHRIS KELLY
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
AOIFE MORAN
RÉPÉTITEUR
BRIAN DUNGAN
RÉPÉTITEUR (ELECTRONICS)
David Sheppard is a sound
designer who has collaborated on
a diverse range of projects across
the world. David worked on The
Second Violinist and The First
Child for Irish National Opera and
Landmark Productions. He works with many leading
orchestras and ensembles as well as rock and pop
musicians, visual artists, and both dance and film
creatives. He collaborates closely with composers
on helping them realise their ideas, but he is also
known as a sound installation artist and electronics
performer in his own right. Last year he worked on
the first ever Augmented Reality opera, Current
Rising, with the Royal Opera House, and began
developing new performance experiences utilising
d&b Audiotechnik’s Soundscape. Irish National Opera
incorporated this into the 2021 tour of Brian Irvine
and Netia Jones’s Least Like The Other, Searching for
Rosemary Kennedy. In 2022 he curated and produced
Immersive Fields, a new festival of 360° audio and
visuals, and a 90-minute sound installation for Tour
De Moon, a three-city festival of UK culture as part of
the nationwide Unboxed celebration.
Chris is a director based in
Dublin, working in opera and
theatre. Previous opera-directing
credits include Gluck’s Orfeo ed
Euridice, Viardot’s Cendrillon,
Humperdinck’s Hänsel und
Gretel, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and Purcell’s
Dido and Aeneas (North Dublin Opera). Theatredirecting
credits include Suicide Tuesday (Little
Shadow Theatre Company), I Am (GSA), Unicorns
Are Real (Jellybelly), and his own adaptation of Alice
in Wonderland (Skerries Soundwaves Festival). He
wrote and co-directed Twenty Minutes From Nowhere
(Crave Productions/Bewley’s Cafe Theatre), which
toured nationwide. Chris works extensively as an
assistant director (Irish National Opera, Opéra
Orchestre National Montpellier, Opera Collective
Ireland). Recent highlights include Rossini’s William
Tell, Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Massenet’s Werther,
Puccini’s La bohème, Strauss’s Salome, Britten’s
Owen Wingrave, Handel’s Semele, and Raymond
Deane’s Vagabones. He holds a Bachelor of Music
from DIT, and a MA in Theatre Practice from UCD and
The Gaiety School of Acting, and is an alumnus of the
Irish National Opera Studio.
Aoife is an Irish collaborative
pianist and répétiteur based in
Dublin. She was a member of the
‘Factory’ programme for young
artists at Wexford Festival Opera
2023. Aoife has worked on operas
including Donizetti’s Zoraida di Granata, Rossini’s
L’Italiana in Algeri (Wexford Festival Opera), Rossini’s
La Cenerentola (Longhope Opera), Holst’s Sāvitri,
Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, Weill’s Der Zar lässt
sich photographieren, Weir’s Miss Fortune, Menotti’s
The Telephone (Guildhall School), and Vaughan
Williams’s Sir John in Love (British Youth Opera). At
home, Aoife has performed as a soloist, accompanist,
and chamber musician for Italian Cultural Institute,
Opera Workshop, RDS Rising Stars, Contemporary
Music Centre’s ‘Musical Tales’ concert series, Boyne
Music Festival, and Music for Galway as part of the
Galway Music Residency Apprentice Ensemble, as
well as at venues in the UK and Switzerland. She has
been awarded many prizes as both a solo pianist and
accompanist, in music festivals in Ireland including
Feis Ceoil and Sligo Feis Ceoil, amongst others. In
Summer 2023, she completed a Junior Fellowship
as a répétiteur at Guildhall School of Music and
Drama after having studied on the Opera Course,
where her studies were generously supported by the
Guildhall School Foundation. She had also previously
graduated from Guildhall with an Artist Masters
in piano accompaniment, where she studied with
Pamela Lidiard and Carole Presland. She graduated
from TU Dublin Conservatoire in 2019 with a Bachelor
of Music degree, where she studied with Catherina
Lemoni-O’Doherty.
Brian Dungan works as a conductor
and music educator in tandem
with his career as a freelance
percussionist. He trains and
conducts choirs and prepares and
directs musicals, and is equally
at home giving music workshops as one-on-one
instruction. As a percussionist Brian has worked
with Irish National Opera and NI Opera, Lyric Opera
Productions, Opera Collective Ireland, as well as his
regular work with the National Symphony Orchestra,
RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Irish
Baroque Orchestra and others. In August 2024 he
plays with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in
two Proms concerts at the Royal Albert Hall. Whether
playing in an orchestral or chamber setting – for
example with Crash Ensemble or Bangers and Crash
Percussion Group – Brian enjoys the surprises and
challenges to be found in the performance of new and
contemporary music. These can range from massive,
one-person setups – such as in the Irish premiere
of Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face with everything
from fishing reels to bags of broken crockery – to the
integration of electronics, for example in the world
premiere of Sam Perkin’s WORD FOR WORD. Brian
maintains a strong commitment to Irish composers
and has performed in the world premieres of many
new works by composers including Deirdre Gribbin,
Anselm McDonnell, Kevin Volans, Donnacha Dennehy,
Linda Buckley, David Coonan, and Andrew Hamilton.
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31

BIOGRAPHIES
NAOMI LOUISA O’CONNELL
MEZZO-SOPRANO
MARY MOTORHEAD
OISÍN Ó DÁLAIGH
TENOR
YOUNGER MAN
JOHN MOLLOY
BASS-BARITONE
OLDER MAN
BETH MORRISON
PROJECTS
Hailed by The New York Times as a
“vivid, charismatic, daring singing
actor,” Naomi made her professional
debut starring on the West End in
Terrence McNally’s play Master Class.
Sought after for her interpretations
of contemporary opera, her bravura performance in the
world premiere of Brian Irvine and Netia Jones’s Least
Like the Other, Searching for Rosemary Kennedy with Irish
National Opera was hailed as “a tour de force” (Sunday
Independent) and “a cut above the extraordinary” (Arts
Review). Naomi’s performance work encompasses both
theatrical and operatic repertoire, and she has collaborated
on projects that vary from sound sculpture installations, to
cabarets, to virtual reality performance art. Notable roles
include Judith in Bartók’s Bluebeards Castle (Boston Lyric
Opera), Poppea in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea
(Oper Frankfurt), Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of
Figaro (Welsh National Opera, Atlanta Opera), Offenbach’s
La Périchole (Garsington Opera) and Mélisande in both
Maeterlinck’s play and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande
(The Cincinnati Symphony). World premieres include Elena
Langer and David Pountney’s Figaro Gets A Divorce, Korine
Fujiwara and Stephen Wadsworth’s The Flood, Emma
O’Halloran’s The Wait, Karen Power and Ione’s TOUCH,
Finola Merivale and Jody O’Neill’s Out of the Ordinary/As an
nGnách, Clarice Assad and Lila Palmer’s The Selfish Giant
and Ricky Ian Gordon and Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel
featured on PBS Great Performances. She premiered
Emma O’Halloran and Mark O’Halloran’s virtuosic
monodrama Mary Motorhead at Prototype Festival,
New York (Jan 2023), where her “startling, spectacularly
animated performance” (Broadway World) was
applauded by critics as “a great operatic impersonation
of the ecstatic driving force of an inner being.”
Oisín Ó Dálaigh is a tenor based in
Dublin. He was awarded a firstclass
honours BMus degree from
TU Dublin Conservatoire, where
he studied with Stephen Wallace
and Aoife O’Sullivan. Oisín began
singing operatic roles and choruses while studying.
In 2015 he sung Goro in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly
with Bowden Opera Festival, Manchester. For North
Dublin Opera he sang the Spirit and the Sailor in
Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Monostatos in Mozart’s
The Magic Flute, and the Prince in the Irish premiere
of Viardot’s Cendrillon. With Opera in the Open, Oisín
sung Monsieur Vogelseng in Mozart’s The Impresario,
Arturo in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Tom
Rakewell in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. Chorus
engagements included productions with Norfolk
Opera Festival, Wide Open Opera, Opera Theatre
Company, Lismore Opera Festival/Blackwater Valley
Opera Festival, Northern Ireland Opera, and Irish
National Opera, where he is now a member of the
company chorus, having previously featured in their
Young Artist Showcase in 2018. Oisín now studies with
Italian tenor Giancarlo Mari, and has also studied with
Christopher Sokolowski and James Dixon Schmidt.
John Molloy is one of Ireland’s
leading basses and hails from
Birr. He studied at TU Dublin
Conservatoire, the Royal Northern
College of Music in Manchester
and the National Opera Studio in
London. For INO he has sung Antonio in Mozart’s
The Marriage of Figaro and Colline in Puccini’s
La bohème, Angelotti in Puccini’s Tosca, and Don
Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Roles he has
undertaken for Opera Theatre Company include
Sparafucile in Verdi’s Rigoletto, Trinity Moses in Weill’s
Mahagonny, the title role in Mozart’s The Marriage
of Figaro, and Zuniga in Bizet’s Carmen. Other roles
include Alidoro in Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Scottish
Opera), Guccio in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi (Royal
Opera House, London), Masetto in Mozart’s Don
Giovanni (English National Opera), Arthur in Peter
Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse and the title role in
Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Nationale Reisopera,
Netherlands), Le Commandeur in Thomas’s La cour
de Célimène (Wexford Festival Opera), Angelotti in
Puccini’s Tosca, Luka in Walton’s The Bear, Banco
in Verdi’s Macbeth and Dulcamara in Donizetti’s
L’elisir d’amore (OTC and NI Opera), Raimondo in
Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (Opera Holland
Park), Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Sarastro in
Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Bonze in Puccini’s Madama
Butterfly (Lyric Opera Productions), Snug in Britten’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Opera Ireland) and
Henry Kissinger in John Adams’s Nixon in China (Wide
Open Opera). International concert repertoire includes
Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Verdi’s Requiem,
Mendelssohn’s St Paul, Haydn’s Creation, Handel’s
Messiah and Stravinsky’s Renard.
Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) is one of the foremost
creators and producers of new opera-theatre and
music theatre, with a fierce commitment to leading
the industry into the future, cultivating a new
generation of talent, and telling the stories of our
time. Founded by “contemporary opera mastermind”
(LA Times) Beth Morrison, who was honoured as one
of Musical America’s Artists of the Year/Agents of
Change in 2020, BMP has grown into “a driving force
behind America’s thriving opera scene” (Financial
Times), with Opera News declaring that the company,
“more than any other... has helped propel the art form
into the twenty-first century.” Operating across the US
and internationally, with offices in Brooklyn and Los
Angeles, BMP’s unique model offers living composers
the support, guidance, and freedom to experiment,
allowing them to create singularly innovative and
impactful projects. Since forming in 2006, the
company has commissioned, developed, produced
and toured over 50 works in 14 countries around the
world, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning chamber
operas Angel’s Bone and p r i s m. In 2013, BMP
co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival with HERE Arts
Center, which has been called “utterly essential” (The
New York Times), “indispensable” (The New Yorker),
and “one of the world’s top festivals of contemporary
opera and theater” (Associated Press).
32 33

BIOGRAPHIES
REMEMBERING
TIMOTHY KING
IRISH NATIONAL OPERA
ORCHESTRA
The Irish National Opera Orchestra performs in most
of INO’s productions and is made up of leading Irish
freelance musicians. Members of the orchestra
have a broad range of experience playing operatic,
symphonic, chamber and new music repertoire. The
orchestra’s work includes Strauss’s Elektra in 2021,
Der Rosenkavalier in 2023 (“delivers all the swelling
romanticism and range of tone and colour you could
ask for,” Irish Examiner) and Salome in 2024 (“a
thumping triumph” Irish Examiner). It is equally at
home in music by Donizetti and Rossini (“wonderful
energy and musical vision,” Bachtrack in 2022 on
Rossini’s William Tell) and Puccini (“the INO Orchestra
handled the sweeping moods in masterly fashion,”
Business Post in 2023 on La bohème).
The orchestra also performs chamber reductions
for touring productions including, Donizetti’s Don
Pasquale (2022) and Massenet’s Werther (2023). The
orchestra’s contemporary repertoire has included
Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face (2018), Maxwell
Davies’s The Lighthouse (2021), and Brian Irvine
and Netia Jones’s Least Like The Other, Searching for
Rosemary Kennedy, in which it made its international
debut at the Royal Opera House in London in 2023.
The orchestra can be heard on the INO recording of
Puccini’s La bohème on Signum Classics.
Together with everyone at INO, I was deeply sorry to
hear of the passing of Timothy King in May. Timothy
was a tremendous supporter of Irish National Opera,
and an important donor right from the start of the
company. He is a big loss to the wider INO family.
Timothy had a huge enthusiasm for opera. He attended
all of our productions, and he was always there for
recitals, concerts and every other type of operatic event.
During Covid he logged on to all we did online, and
subsequently when we could only perform outdoors in
unusual settings, he was there with us every step of the
way. I found his unquenchable enthusiasm inspirational.
Timothy wanted his support for INO to make a
difference. He and I spoke about commissioning new
operas and this was an area of particular interest
to him. He was one of the first to pledge support to
commission one of our 20 Shots of Opera in 2020
– supporting Gerald Barry’s Mrs Streicher and he
subsequently donated towards a new commission
that is yet to be announced. I’m so pleased that his
generosity will have a strong resonance into the future.
Our thoughts and deepest condolences go to Timothy’s
wife Mary Canning, who is also a treasured part of the
INO family.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.
FERGUS SHEIL
INO ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
34
35

IRISH NATIONAL OPERA
STUDIO – NURTURING THE FUTURE OF IRISH OPERA
FOUNDERS CIRCLE
Anonymous
Desmond Barry & John Redmill
Valerie Beatty & Dennis Jennings
Mark & Nicola Beddy
Carina & Ali Ben Lmadani
Mary Brennan
Angie Brown
Breffni & Jean Byrne
Jennifer Caldwell
Seán Caldwell & Richard Caldwell
Caroline Classon, in memoriam
David Warren, Gorey
Audrey Conlon
Gerardine Connolly
Jackie Connolly
Gabrielle Croke
Sarah Daniel
Maureen de Forge
Doreen Delahunty & Michael Moriarty
Joseph Denny
Kate Donaghy
Marcus Dowling
Mareta & Conor Doyle
Noel Doyle & Brigid McManus
Michael Duggan
Catherine & William Earley
Jim & Moira Flavin
Ian & Jean Flitcroft
Anne Fogarty
Maire & Maurice Foley
Roy & Aisling Foster
Howard Gatiss
Genesis
Hugh & Mary Geoghegan
Diarmuid Hegarty
M Hely Hutchinson
Gemma Hussey
Kathy Hutton & David McGrath
Nuala Johnson
Susan Kiely
Timothy King & Mary Canning
J & N Kingston
Kate & Ross Kingston
Silvia & Jay Krehbiel
Karlin Lillington & Chris Horn
Stella Litchfield
Jane Loughman
Rev Bernárd Lynch & Billy Desmond
Lyndon MacCann S.C.
Phyllis Mac Namara
Tony & Joan Manning
R. John McBratney
Ruth McCarthy, in memoriam Niall
& Barbara McCarthy
Petria McDonnell
Jim McKiernan
Tyree & Jim McLeod
Jean Moorhead
Sara Moorhead
Joe & Mary Murphy
Ann Nolan & Paul Burns
F.X. & Pat O’Brien
James & Sylvia O’Connor
John & Viola O’Connor
Joseph O’Dea
Dr J R O’Donnell
Deirdre O’Donovan & Daniel Collins
Diarmuid O’Dwyer
Patricia O’Hara
Annmaree O’Keefe & Chris Greene
Carmel & Denis O’Sullivan
Líosa O’Sullivan & Mandy Fogarty
Hilary Pratt
Sue Price
Landmark Productions
Riverdream Productions
Nik Quaife & Emerson Bruns
Margaret Quigley
Patricia Reilly
Dr Frances Ruane
Catherine Santoro
Dermot & Sue Scott
Yvonne Shields
Fergus Sheil Sr
Gaby Smyth
Matthew Patrick Smyth
Bruce Stanley
Sara Stewart
The Wagner Society of Ireland
Julian & Beryl Stracey
Michael Wall & Simon Nugent
Brian Walsh & Barry Doocey
Judy Woodworth
The Irish National Opera Studio is at the heart
of our mission to nurture the next generation
of Irish opera talent. This programme offers
a unique opportunity for emerging artists to
develop their skills and build their careers.
Highlights include:
Performance Opportunities: Members
participate in Irish National Opera productions,
learning from seasoned artists, performing
onstage, singing in the chorus, understudying
lead roles or assisting in rehearsals.
Professional Mentoring: Participants receive
individual coaching, attend masterclasses and
benefit from the expertise of renowned Irish
and international artists and coaches including
Brenda Hurley, Elīna Garanča, Danielle de
Niese, Joseph Calleja and Tara Erraught.
Skill Development: Support on all aspects
of the industry is a key feature of the
programme including advice on performance,
presentation, language skills, personal musical
growth and professional career guidance.
For information contact Studio
& Outreach Producer James Bingham at
james@irishnationalopera.ie
STUDIO SPOTLIGHT
2023/24 Studio Member Madeline
Judge has recently secured a
coveted position as a member
of the full time chorus of the
Bayerische Staatsoper.
Image: Cast and Madeline Judge in INO’s production of
Verdi’s la traviata. Photo: Emilija Jefremova.
36
37

“We are ready for
these artistic
challenges, but
we need your
help as we set
sail.”
FERGUS SHEIL
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, INO
Our first Wagner opera, The Flying Dutchman, represents a milestone
for Irish National Opera and with it, the Flying Dutchman’s Circle, an
initiative offering supporters a chance to be closely associated with this
historic first for the company. As a Seafarer of the Flying Dutchman,
you will be part of an exclusive group of visionaries who appreciate
the transformative power of opera and are committed to expanding
its reach and impact. The Flying Dutchman demands the highest
levels of artistry, creativity and technical expertise to fully capture its
depth and complexity. Your investment will ensure that we can meet
these demands and present a production of scale and beauty.
JOIN THE FLYING
DUTCHMAN’S
CIRCLE
AS A MEMBER OF THE CIRCLE, YOU’LL ENJOY A HOST OF
EXCLUSIVE OPPORTUNITIES INCLUDING:
Premium Seating:
2 premium seats to the opening
night of The Flying Dutchman at
Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre.
Behind-the-Scenes Access:
Invitations to exclusive rehearsals,
offering a glimpse into the creative
process behind this monumental
production.
Meet-the-Cast Event:
An opportunity to meet the cast and
creative team, providing intimate
insights into the making of the opera.
Acknowledgement:
Your name listed in the programme
and on our website as a key supporter
of INO’s first Wagnerian venture.
Exclusive ‘Flying Dutchman’ Dinner:
Be our guest at an exclusive Flying
Dutchman-themed dinner. This
unforgettable evening promises
a fusion of culinary delights and
thematic elegance, celebrating the
spirit of Wagner’s masterpiece in
grand style.
VIP Updates: Regular updates and
insider information, keeping you
informed and engaged with the
production’s progress.
For more information or to join the Flying Dutchman’s Circle,
please contact Aoife Daly at aoife@irishnationalopera.ie
39

WELCOMING NEW
AUDIENCES WITH
TECHNOLOGY
REIMAGINING THE BOUNDARIES OF OPERA IN THE DIGITAL AGE
At Irish National Opera, we believe opera is for everyone.
By infusing our work with a pioneering spirit and cuttingedge
technology, we invite an ever-growing audience to
access the dynamism of opera.
Our innovative ‘Isolde’ project offers a ground-breaking
platform for synchronising visuals and audio on personal
devices, allowing audiences to use their mobile phones with
projected or screened performances in public or site-specific
locations. Isolde’s user-friendly interface replaces amplified
audio equipment, with potential applications for museums,
galleries, and audio descriptions for the visually impaired in
theatre settings.
INO is part of an exciting new project funded by Horizon
Europe, titled Hybrid Extended reAliTy, or HEAT, exploring
the impact of hologram technology on the opera experience.
HEAT paves the way for next-generation multi-sensory, hyperrealistic,
immersive experiences. We look forward to this latest
journey in the opera-meets-innovation space.
Our award-winning virtual reality community opera, Out of the
Ordinary/As an nGnách, was created by communities from
Inis Meáin to Tallaght in collaboration with composer Finola
Merivale, librettist Jody O’Neill, and director Jo Mangan.
Images: Clockwise from top,
Photos 1 & 2, Screening of
Brian Irvine’s Scorched Earth
Trilogy at Trinity College Dublin,
photos: Dumbworld; Screening
of Peter Maxwell Davies’s The
Lighthouse at Hook Head,
photo: Pádraig Grant; Audience
member at Finola Merivale’s
virtual reality opera, Out of
the Ordinary/As an nGnách, at
Dublin Fridge Festival, photo:
Simon Lazewski.
40
47 41

INO FUTURE LEADERS
NETWORK
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA IS A GREAT
WAY TO MEET PEOPLE AND EXPAND
YOUR NETWORK.
C
This new initiative is tailored to young
professionals across a variety of industries
looking for an enjoyable way to expand
their professional network.
M
Y
CM
MY
CY
CMY
K
RTÉ supports more than
120 arts events nationwide
every year.
INO is a vibrant, dynamic company and our operas
attract a broad and varied audience. Developing a
robust network is crucial to a successful career and
we have created a unique opportunity for professionals
to meet and connect before an opera performance.
With this network, we want to create a space for you to
connect with individuals across a range of sectors, who
have the potential to be your future colleagues, clients,
customers or collaborators. We aim for this network to
empower you to forge meaningful connections that can
open doors to new opportunities, enhance your skill
set, and broaden your perspective – all while enjoying
a world-class opera performance!
This initiative is proudly supported by a partnership
with Spencer Lennox.
To sign up to this network, or if your company
is interested in hosting an event for the
INO Future Leaders Network, please contact
us on development@irishnationalopera.ie
or +353 1 6794962
Photo: Aisling McCaffrey and Guillaume Auvray
at INO Future Leaders event,
November 2023.
Photographer: Mark Stedman.
52
43

Berlioz
BEATRICE & BENEDICT
CONCERT PERFORMANCE
TUESDAY 1 OCTOBER
NATIONAL CONCERT HALL
DUBLIN
FOR BOOKING SEE
irishnationalopera.ie
INSPIRATIONAL
INNOVATIVE IMPACTFUL
SHARING OUR PASSION FOR OPERA
WITH AUDIENCES AROUND IRELAND AND BEYOND
INO OPEN FOYER
Our INO Open Foyer initiative unites communities through
opera. During our recent tour of Vivaldi’s l’Olimpiade we
worked with local community groups to produce creative
responses, these were showcased in local theatres’ foyers
before each show, and included installations, exhibitions, live
performances and publications. All participants received free
tickets to our performances. The INO Open Foyer Series is
generously supported by INO Member, William Earley.
“I’ve never been to an opera and I’ve never really
watched or heard anything about it, but playing it, it
now makes a lot more sense. My first opera and I was
part of it – it was really fun.”
SALOME ON OPERAVISION
Over 30,000 people worldwide watched our production of
Strauss’s Salome via OperaVision, putting Irish opera on the
global stage. We look forward to our next collaboration.
“Outstanding performance, outstanding orchestra,
wonderful production. Thoroughly engrossing, and
the finale was spellbinding.”
INO SCHOOLS PROGRAMME
Last season we welcomed over 350 school students to
productions at the Gaiety and Bord Gáis Energy Theatre with
subsidised tickets. Our Outreach team provided resource
packs and school workshops with opera professionals,
including directors, singers and dancers.
“I didn’t know there were so many components that go
together in an opera. There’s so much work that goes
into it. It’s really amazing.”
45

INO TEAM
Pauline Ashwood
Head of Planning
James Bingham
Studio & Outreach Producer
Janaina Caldeira
Bookkeeper
Muireann Sheahan
Orchestra & Chorus Manager
Fergus Sheil
Artistic Director
David Smith
Accountant part time
Irish National Opera
69 Dame Street
Dublin 2 | Ireland
T: 01–679 4962
E: info@irishnationalopera.ie
irishnationalopera.ie
1–7
DECEMBER
2024
Sorcha Carroll
Communications Manager
Paula Tierney
Company Stage Manager
@irishnationalopera
Aoife Daly
Development Manager
RJ Walters-Dorchak
Artistic Administrator
@irishnatopera
Verdi
Diego Fasciati
Executive Director
Lea Försterling
Digital Communications
Executive
Ciarán Gallagher
Marketing Executive
Sarah Halpin
Digital Producer
Board of Directors
Jennifer Caldwell Chair
Tara Erraught
Gerard Howlin
Dennis Jennings
Suzanne Nance
Ann Nolan
Davina Saint
Bruce Stanley
@irishnationalopera
Company Reg No.: 601853
Registered Charity: 22403
(RCN) 20204547
Cate Kelliher
Business & Finance Manager
Audrey Keogan
Development Executive
Anne Kyle
Stage Manager
Patricia Malpas
Studio & Outreach Executive
Gavin O’Sullivan
Head of Production
Jonathan Friend
Artistic Advisor
WIN 2 FREE TICKETS
Fill in an INO audience survey and
be in with a chance to win two tickets
to the opening night of Rigoletto in
Bord Gáis Energy Theatre.
46
02

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