Elsewhere is a new opera by Irish composer Michael Gallen, based on a radical 1919 event, when the striking staff of Monaghan Asylum, near the soon to be redrawn Irish North-South border, barricaded themselves in and declared a Soviet, integrating the patients into its function. The moment of the Soviet is in constellation with our own, occurring during the 1918 flu pandemic, at a time when the Irish border was in international focus. Marked by death and hardship, the strikers overcame sectarian divides to demand humane conditions and equal pay for men and women. Dealing with themes of freedom, care and mental illness, Elsewhere explores the imagined future of a forgotten past.
The events inElsewhereunfold through the visions of Celine, a patient who decades later remains ‘locked in’ to the moment of the Soviet, believing herself to be its leader. Through her interactions with the charismatic 'Inspector of Lunatics', we tread the borders between fantasy and incarceration. Singers and instrumentalists play a range of characters from patients and strikers to Marx and Jehovah, shape-shifting between work routines, football games, negotiations, dances… in a dynamic both playful and uncanny. The onstage musicians are integral to Celine’s fantasy, agitating on either side of the dispute and playing important character roles. Over time we uncover how Celine’s fate and that of the Soviet are entwined.
Elsewhere was developed in 2019 through workshops in France and Ireland, culminating in a sold-out concert performance near the actual site of the Soviet.
The libretto is co-written by Gallen with poet Annemarie Ní Churreain and playwright Dylan Coburn Gray. It will be produced by Irish opera company Straymaker in co-production with French ensemble Miroirs Étendus and the Abbey Theatre, directed by Tom Creed and conducted by Fiona Monbet with design by Katie Davenport, Sinead McKenna and Luca Truffarelli, produced by Maura O’Keeffe with Anne Delmotte and Sofia Surgutschowa.
The opera will premiere at the Abbey Theatre in November 2021, with planned performances also at the Opéra de Rouen Normandie, Íontas Casteblayney and Operadagen Rotterdam during the 2021/22 Season.
Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland.