This has been a tricky and challenging year.
I gave birth to my second child and started performing on stage pretty soon after. In hindsight, probably not the best planning on my part. But the projects I was involved in were too good to turn down: Don Giovanni with a brilliant cast in a new Roddy Doyle translation in my native Dublin – who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? Then came Heresy: an electronic opera. A new experience for me and a great team. Powder Her Face with NI Opera completed the set – the most challenging score I’ve ever worked on and one of the most complicated productions – 6 costume and wig changes (one wig and costume change took only 90 seconds including shoes and underwear – terrifying!).
In the midst of all that, something really special happened.
Jean Kelly and I had been working for quite some time with writer Dan Milmo and composer David Wallace to produce a new work. We met with older London Irish residents at the Southwark Irish Pensioners Project and recorded their stories and sang with them. We put their stories of emigration and making new lives away from home with our own and David and Dan wrote the most beautiful piece: London Irish Reflections.
We got to perform it at the Forge in Camden thanks to Irish Heritage who supported us. It was a very special night.
The Irish World called it:
contemporary sophisticated musical gold
This is a project that is very close to our hearts and we hope to perform it again in the near future – maybe just as soon as the little one starts to sleep a bit better…
Daire Halpin - Soprano 