CMC Composer Michael Gallen's New Opera wins €100,000 Fedora Prize
Via THE JOURNAL OF MUSIC, published: 28 April 2024. See original article here.
Irish composer Michael Gallen’s The Curing Line has been announced as the winner of the €100,000 Fedora Opera Prize for 2025.
Photo: Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern, Michael Gallen & Maura O'Keeffe receiving the Fedora opera prize in Vienna (Photo © Katharina Schiffl).
The international biennial prize recognises innovative new opera and is selected by a jury including the directors of the Paris Opera, Dutch National Opera, Danish National Theatre, and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
Gallen was previously shortlisted for the award for his opera Elsewhere, which premiered at the Abbey Theatre in 2021 and toured nationwide in April 2024.
While Elsewhere focused on the true story of a strike in Monaghan Asylum in 1919, The Curing Line explores themes of healing, loss of culture and environmental collapse. The narrative centres on a woman who inherits a life-saving ancestral healing power but loses her capacity to use it. The work draws on research into Ireland’s indigenous traditions of ‘making cures’ and examines the consequences of seeing humans and the environment as separate.
Commenting on the work, Birgitta Svendén, Chair of the Fedora Opera Prize Jury, said:
Here and now, the global world is experiencing a turbulent and rather chaotic time. The theme for The Curing Line is more relevant than ever. What can we do as individuals, as communities, what can we learn from history and inherited traditions, how can we acknowledge the change we have to go through without losing hope for the future generations? The Curing Line will address many of the questions that we as human beings are faced with and do not have the answers for. This project is deeply immersive and multisensorial which gives the possibility to expand the boundaries of opera. The narrative, the musical language and the staging will resonate to the audience of tomorrow.
Premiere
The Curing Line will premiere at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in August 2026. Olga Barry, Artistic Director of the Festival, said:
We couldn’t be more thrilled for Michael Gallen and all the team at Straymaker – the Fedora Prize has recognised Michael’s process of making work, which expands and disrupts the boundaries of opera by developing the work in a truly multidisciplinary way with an ensemble drawn from opera, dance, traditional and pop backgrounds. 'The Curing Line' is rooted in the indigenous culture, yet utterly contemporary. Kilkenny Arts Festival is proud to be a co-producer of this exciting new work from Straymaker.
The opera is co-directed by Gallen and Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern, who is also choreographer, and the producer is Maura O’Keeffe. The work is produced in association with Kilkenny Arts Festival, the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, Miroirs Étendus, Once Off Productions and Copenhagen Opera Festival.
Receiving the award at a ceremony at the Vienna State Opera on 26 April, Michael Gallen said:
… for our independent, artist-led work to be selected as the winner of the award gives us a huge rush of affirmation that will carry us forward not just with this project but with all of our future plans and ambitions.
Gallen is a Monaghan-born composer, writer, director, singer and multi-instrumentalist. His work has been commissioned by Radio France, the Orchestre National de Bretagne, the National Symphony Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra. A new album of his songs, Sudden Wells, is due for release in 2026. He lives in Mayo.
The Fedora award is supported by the Silver Company, Opera Europa (the Association of Opera Houses and Festivals in Europe) and the Kiri te Kanawa Foundation.
For more, visit www.fedora-platform.com or www.straymaker.com/michaelgallen.
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