The Hunger: Appeals to God and for pity in this clash of two linguistic worlds

[rating]4[/rating]

The Hunger is billed as an opera, but its composer, Donnacha Dennehy, prefers to call it a “docu-cantata”. It is relatively short, at around 75 minutes, and scored for just two voices, Katherine Manley’s soprano and sean nos singer Iarla O Lionaird. The documentary bit is supplied via snippets of interviews conducted by director Tom Creed with such figures as Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman and Maureen Murphy.