Julie’s feet on ground as her new opera aims for the stars

Arts Week with Judy Murphy – judymurphy@ctribune.ie

Athenry singer-songwriter Julie Feeney is having a busy Monday. She’s just performed live on RTÉ radio’s Pat Kenny Show where she was also discussing her latest projects, including the opera Bird, inspired by Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale, The Happy Prince.

She followed that with two interviews with UK radio stations to mark the release of her latest album, the award-winning Clocks in Britain. Then there’s the Connacht Tribune interview, after which she’s off to the artists’ retreat, Annamakerrig in Co Monaghan to continue working on Bird, which will receive a concert performance net week as part of Galway Arts Festival. She’s also preparing for a concert with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in the National Concert Hall next month, where songs from her three albums, Clocks, Pages and 13 Songs will be performed, with full orchestral backing. Not to mention appearing in Castletown House, Co Kildare as part of the Music in Big Houses series, for which she is creating a special show about Irish people and The Big House.

But, despite a crazy schedule and the fact that she’s been on the road since 6.30am, she is fully in the moment as she settles down to have brunch and talk again about her work.

First up, Bird which she was commissioned to write by Dublin Theatre Festival, Galway Arts Festival, Kilkenny Arts Festival and Cork Midsummer Festival. It’s different to anything she’s worked on before, explains Dublin-based Julie, who originally hails from Ty Saxon, close to Athenry.

“It’s very different to making an album. I craft and make them in exactly the same way, but opera is such a broad art form and there are so many parts to it that I have to keep recalibrating.”

Julie has written the words as well as the music for Bird, although her original intention was to use Oscar Wilde’s text for the The Happy Prince with her music. She did that and performed a 20-minute segment of it at last year’s Dublin Theatre Festival. That was when she realised she wasn’t going to be able to ‘feel’ the story unless she wrote the libretto herself.

“I loved the story, but what really I loved was the reason behind it.”

Wilde’s account of the statue of the unhappy prince, which is befriended by a swallow appealed to her on three levels. It had flying, which she loved; it explored attachment to an inanimate object, which is something we all experience, whether it’s a piece of art or a car; and it was Irish.

Most of all, it felt right.

“When I found the story first I read it and then I went to sleep and left it open, to see if I was in a nice head space when I woke up and if I wanted to read it again.”

She did, using Wilde’s original text. “But after performing the 20 minutes at the Theatre Festival, I realised I wanted to get deeper.”

So she began imagining the scenario behind what Wilde had written and took it in her own direction.

“Initially I wanted it to be about flying and about the swallow flying, then I wanted them [the characters] all to be birds.”

So there’s a swallow, the prince has been re-imagined as a peacock, there’s a swan, a nightingale and a chorus made up of birds of paradise.

The story is not set in any particular time or place, but it’s most definitely ‘birdland’, she laughs.

What she really wanted to do was explore the prince’s story and why he was in statue form.

“Was he put under a spell, why was he so sad, how did he spend his time in the happy life he had, what role did fantasy play in his life?”

The notion of fantasy and its role in our lives fascinates her.

“I’ve never believed the hills are greener on the other side, so while fantasy and imagination are great, you need to bring them into your own life.”

She points to a flower in a vase on the table to illustrate her point.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.