Ireland's Opera Theatre Company presents the Irish premieres of two new operas in September 2003. Ian Wilson's first opera, Hamelin, a collaboration with award-winning poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw, is a dark chamber opera focussing on the fate of a physically disabled girl left behind by the Pied Piper, and on the ways of the town whose children have disappeared. Hamelin, which was premiered in Germany in March, will receive five performances in Sligo, Dublin and Belfast between 6 and 13 September.

Thwaite, a second foray into opera by composer Jürgen Simpson (best known as a member of the successful band, The Jimmycake, and a figure in Dublin's underground music scene) was one of the three winners of the prestigious Genesis Prize for Opera. Composed in collaboration with writer Simon Doyle, it is a co-production with Almeida Opera and the Aldeburgh Festival and will be premiered in the UK in June 2003. Described as 'trenchant, brilliantly characterised and utterly impious', Thwaite's Irish premiere takes place on 23 & 24 September.