Interview with Fergus Sheil about Irish opera shots

As part of our live chats at lunch series, Daniel Calvert speaks to Fergus Sheil, Artistic Director of Irish National Opera, about 20 Shots of Opera, an eclectic collection of short filmed works, newly commissioned for casts of one or two singers and an orchestra of up to eleven players.

Michelle O’Rourke in ‘Dust’, one of the 20 opera ‘shots’. Photo: Irish National Opera

The opera shots are now free to view on the Irish National Opera’s website.

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The history of opera in Ireland is a complicated one. Back in the 18th century, Ireland was considered to be major centre of classical music, attracting composers such as Thomas Arne, Francesco Geminiani and Handel, who premiered his Messiah there in 1742. That reputation continued into the 19th and early 20th
centuries. Wagner’s The Ring Cycle had its first Dublin staging in 1913.

But with the declaration of independence, and the long period of poverty that followed, opera in Ireland came to be regarded with suspicion, as a British import. Performances fizzled out.

Things started to change in the 1940s, with the emergence of an amateur society, which gradually became professionalised and grew into the country’s first permanent national opera company. But Opera Ireland, as it was later named, closed down in 2010. For several years it then fell to fringe outfits, including Wexford Festival Opera, which specialises in niche, neglected
repertoire, to keep the national opera scene going.

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Which is why the position of Irish National Opera is such a significant one. Since its launch in 2018, it has produced high-quality, accessible opera in venues throughout Ireland and overseas, including mainstays of the repertoire as well as contemporary works. For more information about them, click here.