Singin' in the Carlow rain

A new opera for Carlow involves local singers along with the RTÉ NSO, writes ARMINTA WALLACE

LAURA IS GETTING ready for her hen night. Sorcha and Kevin are breaking up. Teenagers are texting like crazy about who fancies who – plus, wasn’t the sunny weekend just fabulous?

Love and weather are great things to sing about. Think of It's Raining Men, Always Take The Weather With You– and any opera by Puccini you care to name. Now Carlow has its very own opera, Shelter Me From The Rain, based on stories told by the people of the county to composer Brian Irvine and librettist John McIlduff.

First mooted by conductor Fergus Sheil in January 2008, this is a massive undertaking which brings 100 singers aged eight to 80 – some of whom have never sung anything, let alone contemporary opera, before – together with the Aspiro choir and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra.

“It’s a bit crazy, isn’t it?” says Sheil, who was invited by Carlow County Council to propose some music projects under its Per Cent for Art budget.

“They had done a lot of visual art and wanted to broaden out to other art forms, so they asked some people – including myself – to float some ideas.

“This one was added on at the end as a sort of an afterthought – as in, ‘If you wanted to be really crazy, you could do an opera’. But somehow this was the idea that people gravitated to.” And not just in Carlow; when he approached RTÉ to get the NSO involved, Sheil found himself pushing an open door. “It’s only 12 players – well, that’s all that would fit in the pit, anyway,” he says. “But they were really, really open to it. I think they understand things are changing out there. That they need to be, first of all, doing things outside of Dublin. And second, doing things that engage with the public in ways that are outside of the normal Friday night concert hall gigs.”

The process of putting the opera together has been documented in a series of podcasts which reveal not just the energy and enthusiasm of local people but the quirkiness of the score, which invokes everything from the Nokia ringtone to moments of classic choral beauty. For Sheil, this kind of community project may have a major role to play in the future of classical music, raising personal goalposts as it challenges assumptions and prejudices. “We went around the county meeting people in pubs and parish halls. We could have written 10 operas with the material we got.” Now there’s a thought. An opera for every county in Ireland? Or are we just going to sit back and leave the lateral cultural thinking to Ireland’s second littlest county?

Shelter Me From The Rain – An Opera for Carlowwill be at the GB Shaw Theatre, Carlow from May 5th to 7th. Catch the podcasts at podcastingireland.ie