Dennehy - OPERAS

MUSIC SALES | CONTEMPORARY OPERAS

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Donnacha Dennehy Operas The Last Hotel | The Second Violinist The First Child | The Hunger | Custom of the Coast

‘From the exhilarating score, lyrical singing, and dazzlingly intricate design, this is a work that needs to be seen more than once in order to absorb the rich detail. Like its recurring filmed image of a murmuration of starlings, it soars.’ Helen Meany on The Second Violinist, The Guardian

Cover image: Britt Olsen-Ecker

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Born in Dublin, Donnacha Dennehy has had work featured in festivals and venues around the world, including the Edinburgh International Festival, Royal Opera House (London), Carnegie Hall, The Barbican, BAM, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, ISCM World Music Days, WNYC's New Sounds Live, Bang On A Can, Ultima Festival (Oslo), Musica Viva (Lisbon), the Saarbrucken Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and the Gaudeamus Festival (Amsterdam).

Dennehy has been commissioned by Dawn Upshaw, the Kronos Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, Bang On A Can, Third Coast Percussion, Icebreaker (London), Contact (Toronto), Orkest de Ereprijs (Netherlands), Percussion Group of the Hague, RTE National Symphony Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, BBC Ulster Orchestra and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, among others. Collaborations include pieces with the writer Enda Walsh (including his recent opera The Last Hotel), the choreographers Yoshiko Chuma and Shobana Jeyasingh, and the visual artist John Gerrard. He founded Ireland’s Crash Ensemble in 1997, whose Nonesuch release entitled Grá agus Bás was named one of NPR’s ‘50 favorite albums’ (in any genre) in 2011.

In recent years, Dennehy has concentrated especially on large-scale musicodramatic works. His first opera, The Last Hotel (2015), with a libretto by Enda Walsh, was met with critical acclaim in the UK when it premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2015 His second opera with Enda Walsh, The Second Violinist (2017), won the 2017 Fedora Prize for Opera (Salzburg/Paris) and was premiered in July 2017 at the Galway International Arts Festival, with subsequent performances at the Barbican in London in September 2018 and at Dutch National Opera in March 2019.

Other recent pieces include the docu-opera The Hunger (2012-16), co-produced

by Alarm Will Sound and Opera Theatre St. Louis; two percussion quartets (Broken Unison for So Percussion and Surface Tension for Third Coast Percussion); three string quartets (The weather of it for the Doric Quartet, First Frost for RTE Radio One, and Strange Folk for Princeton University Concerts); as well as two large ensemble works (Canons and Overtones commissioned by Crash Ensemble and Carnegie Hall for the Knights, and Overcasting for the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Green Umbrella series in June 2019, John Adams conducting). Recent recordings include his piece for Nadia Sirota and viol consort, Tessellatum, released by Bedroom Community (August 2017), and Cantaloupe Music's March 2019 release of The Last Hotel, which features Crash Ensemble and the Irish National Opera.

His music is published by G. Schirmer in New York, part of the Music Sales Group.

Introduction

Introduction

The Last Hotel

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The Last Hotel (2015) Libretto in English by Enda Walsh.

Duration

1 hour 20 minutes

Premiere August 2015, Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh Scotland Cast & Orchestration 2S, Bar, silent role; fl(pc,trec), cl(bcl), tbn, perc, acn, egtr(bass drum), pf, 2vn, va, vc, db(5 string); sound design

Synopsis An English couple and an Irish woman meet at a hotel. Pensioners arrive with their families. The husband asks himself – how many of them would choose to die? The Irish woman wants to know when they’re going to rehearse – because a rehearsal was an important part of the service the husband and wife were offering. The husband talks about what he’ll build when they return home to England. They rehearse the woman’s suicide. They will use pills and gas.

This is the moment. Suddenly the husband and wife are on a car ferry – the hotel still visible in the distance. The wife is left alone and she calls out to the Universe for some resolution – some peace. She’ll have to live with the voices of many dead people in a house built from their souls. There is no rest for the Irish woman. Though now dead – she still hurts.

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The Last Hotel (donnachadennehy.com)

‘ Entirely, breathtakingly glorious... this is a wonderful production; searing, powerful, funny, moving, mischievous, aphasic, devastating, beautiful.’

Sophie Gorman, The Irish Independent

‘ The instrumental score is what crept deepest under my skin: The Last Hotel unleashes a thrilling musical energy.

Dennehy’s 12-piece ensemble includes accordion, electric guitar and heavy percussion, and thrums with a savage, unstoppable groove, shouting the unspeakable, seething with emotions that characters are too numb to express. It’s propulsive, gritty and rich.’

Kate Molleson, The Guardian

The Second Violinist (Patrick Redmond)

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(2017) Libretto in English by Enda Walsh.

Duration

90 minutes

Premiere July 2017, Galway International Arts Festival, Galway, Ireland Cast & Orchestration S., Mz, Bar, actor (man), child (14 yr old girl); SATB chorus (16 singers); Ensemble of 14 players Winner of the 2017 Fedora Prize in Opera

Synopsis Martin, the second violinist starts to experience a mental breakdown.

A married couple, Matthew and Amy, and their houseguest Hannah, sing.

Martin’s playing is increasingly terrible. A voice reaches out from Martin’s screen. A forest enters his dreams. Matthew and Amy’s marriage is in a bad state, and Amy is in love with Hannah. Matthew murders them in revenge.

We become aware that Matthew is the younger version of Martin: this is his past. He arranges to meet the voice that had reached out to him - in the forest: a 14 year old girl who comes to meet a 14 year old boy. Here he will end things.

‘ These insecurities and desires are Strindbergian in intensity. Rendered into operatic format they become overwhelming forces... If anything, this sublime production insists on forging a cautionary tale for modern times.’

Chris McCormack, Exeunt Magazine

‘ ...a stimulating and provocative thrill-ride.’

Padraic Killeen, Irish Examiner

The Second Violinist An opera in one act

The Second Violinist An opera in one act

The First Child

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Opera in development (available for co-commission)

The First Child Libretto in English by Enda Walsh.

Synopsis The First Child is the third in the collaborative trilogy of contemporary operas

by Dennehy and Walsh. Karen, a single woman, comes into contact with a young couple and their new baby via repeated ‘chance’ meetings through which they become better acquainted. As the drama progresses we come to understand their shared past and how their lives interconnect with the old woman and her nurse who are introduced via interspersed scenes.

The First Child grapples with, among other contemporary issues, the impact of childhood bullying and the negative outcomes that can last a lifetime.

The Hunger (Courtesy of Brooklyn Academy of Music)

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(2016) Libretto in English by Asenath Nicholson, anon.

Interviews with Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, Maureen Murphy, Branko Milanovic, and Megan Vaughan.

Duration

1 hour 10 minutes

Premiere September 2016, Alarm Will Sound, co-produced

by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, St. Louis, MO Cast & Orchestration 4, Sean-Nós Singer; 1(Pic,Afl).1(Ca).2(Bcl).1. /1.1.1.0/2perc/Pf/Str; Vintage Recordings, Electronics, Video Interviews

Synopsis The Hunger concerns itself with the Great Irish Famine of 1845-52, which transformed Irish society irrevocably. The main narrative in the piece is provided by the accounts of the famine by the American non-conformist Asenath Nicholson who spent two years traveling around Ireland helping those dying from starvation and writing about her experiences. Her account stands outside the norm because of her transgressive sympathy; she directly quotes from those suffering. Extremely little is available from those who directly suffered. Only the song, ‘Na Prátaí Dubha (Black Potatoes)’, of the Sean-nós tradition deals with the topic. Shards of that song form the basis of an extended section sung by the Sean-nós singer.

‘ I was blown away by how affecting and compelling this 90 minute piece is...’

Chris Gibson, Broadway World

The Hunger A docu-opera

The Hunger A docu-opera

Custom of the Coast Music theater for soprano, mezzo and string quartet

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Opera in development (available for co-commission)

Custom of the Coast – the story of Pirate Anne Bonney Music theater for soprano, mezzo and string quartet Libretto in English by Paul Muldoon.

Synopsis In Custom of the Coast, two radically different confluences of birth and death are presented in the piece: Anne Bonny, the Irish 18th century pirate, her sentence of death is commuted because of pregnancy; and Savita, an Indian-born dentist living in Galway Ireland, in the 2000s, who dies from septicemia after being denied an abortion.

The Second Violinist (donnachadennehy.com)

‘Dennehy’s mastery of microtonality allows the harmonies to thicken into dense clumps of overtones, creating sounds that seem less “dissonant” in the conventional sense than bright, hot, metallic, and pointed.’

Daniel Stephen Johnson, Musical America

For more information about Donnacha Dennehy, please contact: Peggy Monastra E: peggy.monastra@schirmer.com T: 212-254-2100 Marcos Cuevas E: marcos.cuevas@schirmer.com T: 212-254-2100 musicsalesclassical.com

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