John O'Brien: 'Story about fate' inspires new production in Cork Opera House

Composer John O'Brien shares an insight with Cathy Desmond into his new opera with Éadaoin O'Donoghue, including his lockdown note-swapping at a grotto with Morrígan's conductor

Tue, 19 Jul, 2022 - 21:00

Cathy Desmond

It’s hot and sticky on Joe Murphy Road, in Ballyphehane on a midweek afternoon and the mood is highly charged. A fierce battle is in progress; axes are wielded and there is vigorous sword action all played out to the primal growl of not one but two bass drums. A visceral, action-packed scene in a new opera is in rehearsal.

Morrígan is a new opera by composer/librettist team John O’Brien and Éadaoin O’Donoghue and the production, while not Wagnerian in scale, is more ambitious than their first opera, a setting of Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose staged by the Everyman in 2018.

For this new work, they turn to ancient Irish mythology for source material. The Morrígan was a great warrior-queen goddess associated with war, fate and death. With magical shape-shifting powers, she often appears as a crow as a prelude to doom. Look closer at the statue of the Cú Culainn in the GPO, and you will see this goddess perched on the dying warrior’s shoulder, a sure sign that the hero is toast.

At a break in rehearsals O’Brien shares some insights into the work. O’Donoghue’s libretto is a reworking of Deirdre and the Sons of Usna.

“In all the stories in Irish mythology, this one has the best dramatic arc. It is the story about fate — of a king corrupted by lust and greed who drags his whole kingdom to its doom. It has a clear beginning, a middle and end with great characters involved in political machinations and gory deaths like a Greek tragedy. In our version, Morrígan is the divine feminine who acts as a frame for the story. She is played by three people as the young girl, queen, old crone triptych.”

Twelve-year-old Liv Gregorio plays a Morrígan who sings, Sarah Ryan is a dancing Morrígan, and long-time collaborator Karen Underwood completes the divine trio in a non-singing role.

As usual in a production helmed by O’Brien, musicians are not confined to the pit. Two onstage percussionists act as narrators who move through the action, guiding us through the story.

This production started out in the Everyman with a smaller scale version of the work. A concert performance of a work titled Deirdre and the Sons of Usna was performed in
January 2020 with ambitions to stage a staged version the following year. For a composer who clearly relishes the collaboration with theatrical teams, the last two years have been difficult, and his voice becomes muted as he recalls ‘dark and depressing days’ as one by one projects were cancelled after months of planning. With time on his hands, O’ Brien went back to his score of Deirdre, rewriting it for a larger orchestra.

O’Brien credits another key collaborator in the process, Conor Palliser who will conduct this production. The pair found a work-around to the restrictions during lockdown.

“Between our two houses, there is a grotto. I sent Conor drafts and we met there and swapped notes over a couple of months. I orchestrated this before I knew it would happen. It was something to do. It kept us going.” One can only imagine the two maestros sitting socially distanced on either side of the Virgin Mary.

O’Brien has crafted the score with specific performers in mind and the cast and ensemble is stacked with Irish and overseas singers that have already garnered fans in Cork. Among the overseas contingent, countertenor Viktor Priebe who played Cherubino in a recent Cork Opera House concert performance, Jung Soo Yun and Julian Tovey, Faust and Mephistopheles respectively in 2015 at the Everyman return to Cork for this production.

With a cast and chorus of 45, the production needed more room and moved across the river to the bigger stage at the Opera House. The production is the first large-scale production in several years produced by Cork Opera House.

“This will be epic,” says John O’Brien. “It is so exciting to be able to make work again on this scale, with an amazing group of world-class talented artists, and to share it with an audience at the Cork Opera House will be magical communal joy."