Saturday September 17 2022
8pm

Irish National Opera presents

The First Child

By Donnacha Dennehy & Enda Walsh

A co-production with Landmark Productions.

Tickets €32 & €28

  Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s third opera, The First Child, is a 90-minute multi-media experience. It brings together a sensational cast of opera singers, an actor, a dancer and a children’s chorus to create a work that electrifies the senses. It wowed audiences and critics at the Dublin Theatre Festival last October and again at Galway International Arts Festival in July. Irish National Opera, in association with Landmark Productions, now brings this acclaimed production, directed by Enda Walsh, on tour to Navan, Cork, Limerick and Tralee between Wednesday 14 and Sunday 25 September.

The First Child has received rave reviews. “With more twists than a corkscrew, The First Child keeps you hooked till the very dark end. And even then you’re left thinking,” said The Arts Review. “Walsh’s satirical libretto,” wrote The Sunday Times, “takes aim at the wine o’clock Dublin suburban classes, while Dennehy’s score (played live by the virtuosic 14-piece Crash Ensemble conducted by Ryan McAdams) exquisitely tunes our emotional register to the damage of childhood trauma.”

Fergus Sheil, artistic director of Irish National Opera, says, “The First Child is an extraordinarily ambitious new opera. At first glance it is a comic, feel-good opera about a new father buying a baby carrier. But nothing is quite what it seems in a work where a disturbing and grotesque story unfolds and childhood trauma plays out in devastating ways across different generations. It’s an opera with beautiful and haunting singing (including an outstanding children’s choir), dynamic playing from Crash Ensemble, engrossing video and life-or-death dancing. It has had outstanding successes at Dublin Theatre Festival and Galway International Arts Festival, and we are delighted to take it on tour for audiences around Ireland to get to see it first-hand.”

★ ★ ★★ ★  ‘High-octane triumph’  
The Sunday Times

★★★★★ “Simply magnificent”
The Arts Review
 
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “A remarkable conclusion to the Dennehy-Walsh partnership”
The Irish Times