Fresh off a critically acclaimed US run, Irish composer and mezzo-soprano Emma O'Halloran is taking her extraordinary, searing one-act operas on tour in a single show.

Both Trade  and Mary Motorhead will receive their respective European debuts, as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival, with four performances in all, running from Thursday August 8 to Sunday August 11 (the latter performance is a matinee at 3pm).

The show is being co-presented by the festival and the Irish National Opera. It will then head on an Irish tour in October – promoted by the Irish National Opera – which will see Trade / Mary Motorhead play in Dun Laoghaire (as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival), Cork, Tralee, Ennis and Navan.

Emma O'Halloran is one of the most exciting talents to emerge in Irish music in recent times. A multi-award winning graduate of the Princeton doctoral programme, she embraces acoustic and electronic music in her work, which has been featured at the international Classical NEXT conference in Rotterdam, the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, and MATA Festival, and has been performed by Crash Ensemble, Contemporaneous, Khemia Ensemble, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra.

Trade  and Mary Motorhead are written with librettist Mark O'Halloran, who is most widely-known for his starring role in the Lenny Abrahamson classic Adam and Paul. O'Halloran is also a successful screenwriter and playwright – and the one-act operas are based on two of his theatrical works – Trade, first performed in 2011; and Mary Motorhead, first performed in 2001. There is an added element of intrigue in the fact that the two artists are related – Mark being Emma's uncle.

O'Halloran's show has also been lined up for the Dublin Theatre Festival on October 11-13.

Trade and Mary Motorhead both delve into the complexities of modern life, featuring characters in unexpected situations, reacting to the bizarre twists and turns that life has thrown at them. There is a powerful darkness involved, in what Mark O'Halloran has described as "really broke and screwed-up love stories."

In the monodrama Mary Motorhead, the character, performed by Emma O'Halloran herself, is in prison after stabbing her husband in the head. Languishing behind bars, while he lies in intensive care, she has lots of time to reflect on the events that brought their turbulent rural marriage to such a desperate nadir.

The second opera, Trade, is set in a guesthouse in Dublin’s north inner-city. Trade opens with a vulnerable young rent-boy, sung by tenor Oisín Ó Dálaigh, sitting with a middle-aged client, performed by bass John Molloy. The older man has blood on his shirt. A lot has happened since the two last met.

Mark O’Halloran’s texts cut straight to the raw emotional core of each character; Emma O’Halloran’s scores, meanwhile, combine beauty and drama in the vocal lines, with echoes of gritty 80’s electronic music layered over the orchestral accompaniment, creating a new and unique soundscape. Together, the two one-act operas represent a genuinely remarkable achievement.

Further information regarding tickets and dates can be found below: 

Kilkenny Kilkenny Arts Festival - tickets here. 
Thursday 8 August 2024 | 7pm
Friday 9 August 2024 | 7pm
Saturday 10 August 2024 | 7pm
Sunday 11 August 2024 | 3pm
Tickets €35/ €32 concession

Dún Laoghaire Pavilion Theatre -Tickets here
As part of Dublin Theatre Festival
11-13 October 2024 | 7:30 pm
Tickets €38/€25

Cork Cork Opera House - Tickets here
Wednesday 16 October 2024 | 7:30 pm
Tickets €30/€27

Tralee Siamsa Tíre - Tickets here
Sat 19 October |7:30 pm
Tickets €30/27

Ennis Glór - Tickets here
Wed 23 October |7:30 pm
Tickets €30/27

Navan Solstice Arts Centre - Tickets here
Sat October 26 |7:30 pm