Cork talents pay tribute to Cara O'Sullivan at Éiru; Mary Hickson teases Safe Harbour plans
Mary Hickson, left, enlisted the likes of Doireann Ní Ghriofa, Marie Mullen and Talos for the Éiru project, developed with Body & Soul.
Mary Hickson gets goosebumps as she remembers the haunting strains of Dido’s Lament echoing around Cork Opera House. “Ten years ago was my first production of Dido. It was with Cara O’Sullivan at Cork Opera House,” she says, referring to the great Leeside soprano who passed away in January at age 58.
“She played Dido and she sang that lament,” says Hickson, former chief executive of the Opera House and now a globally-renowned curator of a stable artistic residencies and festivals that includes Cork’s Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival.
“There’s a serendipity about us doing this piece now following her recent sad passing. So we decided on Dido’s Lament. That was the one pre-composed piece that I felt needed to form the centre of this.”
The project to which she refers is a multidisciplinary presentation, Éiru’s Threshold, which debuts online on Saturday February 13. Ten years since the Opera House’s production of Henry Purcell’s 1689 opera Dido and Aeneas it will see another Cork artist interpreting the chilling aria. On this occasion the honour falls to Eoin French, of the esoteric indie band Talos.
It’s quite a twist. Dido’s Lament – a meditation on life, death and the journey from the former to the latter – is usually sung by a woman. The innovation here is to have its feminine spirit brought to life by a male vocalist.
“There is something really powerful about it being sung by a male voice,” says Hickson, from her lockdown residency in Cork. “We asked Eoin French if he would be interested in working on the project with us. It’s moving it away from the notion of female spiritual [into something] more feminine. And how the male and the female support each other.
“Traditionally it is always and ever sung by a female. We were thinking about opera singers and other unique Irish voices. Then I came across this podcast about the Lament and in the end is this incredible rendition of Jeff Buckley singing. It absolutely broke my heart. It’s the most fragile representation I’ve ever heard.”
Éiru’s Threshold is a 10-minute audio visual work filmed across the now unoccupied Body and Soul festival site at Ballinlough Castle, Co Westmeath, which will be streamed from 8pm on Saturday.
It represents a new collaboration between Hickson and Body and Soul director Avril Stanley. The suggestion initially had been to stage an artistic residency at Ballinlough by 37d03d, the artistic collective of which Hickson is director and which has featured The National’s Bryce and Aaron Dessner, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, and others. But the ramping up of the lockdown to level five forced a rethink.
“I’d been to Body and Soul. But obviously it is going to feel very different. There aren’t thousands and thousands of people on site,” says Hickson. “It’s such a magical location. You can visibly see a story unfolding before your eyes.” The “Éiru” of the title is the ancient Celtic goddess regarded as a spiritual embodiment of Ireland and a manifestation of its feminine soul.
“In the way we are portraying her, we want Éiru to represent us all,” says Hickson. ‘Irish women – the feminine Irish. We leaned into that. It’s a really nice way to make this work and distract us all from the pandemic life. And fortunately it’s still possible, with Covid precautions, to do it outdoors. There was a lot of pre-planning and health and safety. It was really emotional. I don’t think we realised how starved we were until we were making something again. I have been busy. But it’s been passing files around the internet, I guess, for the past year. To watch something form before your eyes is a huge privilege.”
The haunting work with all feature poetry by Cork-based writer Doireann Ní Ghriofa, a central performance by dancer Robyn Byrne, from Mullingar, who will “embody the spirit of Ériu” and voiceover by actress Marie Mullen. It has been directed by Mia Mullarkey (Mother and Baby,Throwline), while the music is by French, Elaine Howley of Cork band The Altered Hours and Kate Ellis of Crash Ensemble.
“We are focusing on this idea of threshold,” Hickson explains. “Of death being birth and birth being death. The idea that you have to die to be born, you have have to fall to be risen. And I thought, there is only one song in my mind which represents that: Dido’s Lament. I woke up one morning and thought, well it has to be that.”
In another version of 2021, Hickson would be putting the finishing touches to the fourth edition of the Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival which by tradition runs every two years. The festival has been a real coup for Cork with The National, Bon Iver, Feist, Jon Hopkins and Damien Rice among those participating in gigs and workshops since 2015.
But with live music unlikely to return to Ireland until late 2021 (at the earliest), her focus has by necessity turned elsewhere. Spending most of the lockdown in Cork, she has worked virtually with collaborators such as Justin Vernon, half a world away in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and with a promising up-and-coming singer-songwriter from New Jersey.
“I was involved in a Bon Iver track a couple of months ago with Bruce Springsteen,” she explains. “Justin sang with Bruce. But they never sat in a room together. So it almost doesn’t feel like it happened, when you don’t get the experience in real life. I spent most of last year as creative director on a creative voting drive called For Wisconsin with Bon Iver, where we used our community to encourage people to vote.
"Feist, Arcade Fire and loads of our friends gave creative output to encourage members of the public to register [to vote in the US Presidential election]. For six or seven months last year most of my attention was on that, from my table in Cork.”
Hickson can’t see how a conventional Songs from a Safe Harbour could possibly go ahead this year. However, she is looking into some way of acknowledging the festival.
“I have a couple of irons on the fire in the ‘enhanced experience’ space”, she says. “I’m not super-psyched about it. I’d rather have everyone in the room together in real life. But it feels like the more this situation is prolonged the more I feel I need to raise that technology wall a bit. I’m not going to say definitively yes or no about Sounds from a Safe Harbour. We will wait and see… If we can make something happen, I ‘d like to make something happen – whether that is virtual or instillation or something in a public space. I can’t see us being in venues. It will be quite some time, unfortunately.”
She is more confident about the festival coming back when the pandemic is finally over. But it will be a case of wait and see.
“As soon as it is possible, there will be a massive appetite from both the audience and the artists for new work. My initial concern is that when it’s all back and running it’s going to be a very densely populated market. There’s going to need to be a settling down period, where things go back to some semblance of normality. It’s about when the world needs Sounds from a Safe Harbour. We want to present it to the public when it is essential and adds value.”
- Éiru’s Threshold premieres online 8pm, Saturday, February 13. Viewing is free, but advance sign-up is required at bodyandsoul.ie
