Extracts from Roger Doyle's new opera 'The Death By Fire Of Giordano Bruno' performed at Mermaid Arts Centre and Dublin Theatre Festival

Following a performance at this year's Kilkenny Arts Festival in August, the opera scenes will be performed in Bray and Dublin on 3 and 5 October 2013 as part of Burned, a fully-staged performance featuring works by Roger Doyle.

The Death By Fire Of Giordano Bruno is the first opera written by Doyle and also the first opera on the life and works of Giordano Bruno, one of the Renaissance’s most influential, controversial and heroic figures - a visionary thinker and iconoclast whose ideas and ideology are more at home in the 21st century than they were in the 16th.

Featuring a libretto by playwright Jocelyn Clarke and a production staged by the Irish-based American opera director, Eric Fraad, the opera is written for five singers, four acoustic instrumentalists and large-scale electronic backing track.

The opera is funded by the Arts Council and is being produced by META, a new company founded by Fraad and Doyle in order to create and produce dynamic and innovative new works of opera and music theatre that explore and expand the boundaries of these art forms. The complete opera will be presented in Ireland and internationally in 2015.

The performances takes place at the Mermaid Theatre, Bray, Co. Wicklow on 3 October at 8pm, and the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Trinity College, Dublin, on 5 October at 1pm as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival.

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/113518324" params="" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]

View extracts from an interview with composer Roger Doyle and director Eric Fraad about their collaboration on the opera.