This is Luke’s first opera, and it probably couldn’t have gone better as a debut. He was blessed to have an experienced collaborator in Shirley who shared his pragmatic approach, and their field trip around the West of Ireland as research for this opera is something he will never forget.
Luke came to Guildhall (and to London in general) to challenge himself, to not settle for writing the same music over and over, and in this he believes he succeeded inasmuch as he extended his technique and compositional language but retained enough of his personality and idiom to still be recognisably his.
Who knew that a contemporary opera about people who consider murdering their siblings on a remote farm in 1970s Ireland could be so universal?!
