The Lily of Killarney is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in three acts by Julius Benedict

Julius Benedict

Sir Julius Benedict was a German-born composer and conductor, resident in England for most of his career.-Life:...

. The libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

, by John Oxenford and Dion Boucicault

Dion Boucicault

Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...

, is based on Boucicault's own play The Colleen Bawn

The Colleen Bawn

The Colleen Bawn, or The Brides of Garryowen is a melodramatic play written by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault. It was first performed at Miss Laura Keene's Theatre, New York, on 27 March 1860 with Laura Keene playing Anne Chute and Boucicault playing Myles na Coppaleen. It was most recently...

. The opera received its premiere at Covent Garden Theatre, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 on Monday 10 February 1862.

Background

The Lily of Killarney became the most widely performed of Benedict's operas. It has been linked with Balfe

Michael William Balfe

Michael William Balfe was an Irish composer, best-remembered for his opera The Bohemian Girl.After a short career as a violinist, Balfe pursued an operatic singing career, while he began to compose. In a career spanning more than 40 years, he composed 38 operas, almost 250 songs and other works...

's The Bohemian Girl

The Bohemian Girl

The Bohemian Girl is an opera composed by Michael William Balfe with a libretto by Alfred Bunn. The plot is loosely based on a Cervantes tale, La Gitanilla.The opera was first produced in London at the Drury Lane Theatre on November 27, 1843...

and Wallace

William Vincent Wallace

William Vincent Wallace was an Irish composer and musician.-Early life:Wallace was born at Colbeck Street, Waterford, Ireland. Both parents were Irish, his father, of County Mayo, was a regimental bandmaster....

's Maritana

Maritana

Maritana is a grand opera in three acts composed by William Vincent Wallace, with a libretto by Edward Fitzball . The opera is based on the play Don César de Bazan by Adolphe d'Ennery and Philippe François Pinel Dumanoir , which was also the source material for Jules Massenet's opéra comique Don...

as 'The Irish Ring'. Its convincing handling of Irish idiom is interesting considering Benedict's German-Jewish origins. Some of the opera's songs - notably The moon hath raised her lamp above and Eily Mavourneen - remain in the repertoire. The opera is mentioned in James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

 Ulysses

Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...

and Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and '30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens...

 Nightwood

Nightwood

Nightwood is a 1936 novel by Djuna Barnes first published in London by Faber and Faber. An edition published in the United States in 1937 by Harcourt, Brace included an introduction by T. S. Eliot.....

.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, February 1862 (Conductor: - )
Eily O'Connor (the 'colleen bawn')	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Louisa Pyne Louisa Pyne Louisa Bodda-Pyne was an English soprano and opera company manager.She was born Louisa Fanny Pyne in 1832, the youngest daughter of the alto George Pyne...
Ann Shute	soprano
Mr. Corrigan	bass
Father Tom	bass
Hardress Cregan	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Mr Haigh
Mrs. Cregan	contralto Contralto Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
Danny Mann	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Charles Santley Charles Santley Sir Charles Santley was an English-born opera and oratorio star with a bravuraFrom the Italian verb bravare, to show off. A florid, ostentatious style or a passage of music requiring technical skill technique who became the most eminent English baritone and male concert singer of the Victorian era...
Myles na Coppaleen	tenor

Synopsis

Killarney

Killarney

Killarney is a town in County Kerry, southwestern Ireland. The town is located north of the MacGillicuddy Reeks, on the northeastern shore of the Lough Lein/Leane which are part of Killarney National Park. The town and its surrounding region are home to St...

 at the end of the 18th century. Creggan has married Eily (the 'colleen bawn' = Gaelic 'the fair maid') in secret. Corrigan threatens to dispossess Creggan and his mother, who have mortgaged their lands to him, unless Creggan marries the heiress Ann Shute. Creggan's friend Danny offers to resolve the situation by killing Eily. Creggan demurs, but the unwitting Mrs. Creggan is persuaded by Danny to give a signal for Eily's death. But before he can kill her, Danny himself is accidentally shot by Myles (who is out hunting), to whom he confesses. Creggan is about to marry Ann when Corrigan arrives to arrest him for plotting Eily's death. Myles makes public Danny's confession, Creggan acknowledges Eily and Ann (in the most unlikely turn of all) undertakes to settle the Creggans' debts to Corrigan.

Sources

• Nigel Burton, The Lily of Killarney in Grove Music Online
• The Viking Opera Guide ed. Holden (Viking, 1993)