Book is basis of upcoming opera in Northampton.
Award-winning writer Michael C. White recognizes the draw “The Garden of Martyrs,” a new opera inspired by his novel of the same name, will have for area audiences: It’s about Pioneer Valley history, and it involves what he calls a “huge and very infamous trial.”
“People in America love their trial-of-the-month,” said White, program director of the master of fine arts program in creative writing at Connecticut's Fairfield University, mentioning the George Zimmerman and O.J. Simpson trials. “They capture latent prejudices, hopes and aspirations and fears in one place.”
White will speak about his book on Sept. 19, as part of the Springfield Museums’ à la Carte series, at 12:15 p.m. in the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts.
The book, and the opera based on it that will premiere at the Academy of Music, in Northampton, on Sept. 20 and 22, deal with the story of Dominic Daley and James Halligan, two Irish Catholic immigrants who were hanged, in Northampton, for a murder for which they were later exonerated.
White’s novel is framed through the eyes of the Rev. Jean Lefebvre de Cheverus, a French priest who knew the men and said Mass for them in their jail cell.
Daley and Halligan were exonerated on St. Patrick’s Day 1984.
White aims for historical accuracy with his book, and looks forward to the opera.
“Opera can take basic human passion and heighten it even further,” he said.
A former resident of Wilbraham, White has visited the site there where the murder is believed to have taken place, and the site of a memorial to the men near their execution site.
He finds both sites “chilling,” noting how the young men had come to America seeking a better life, and their lives ended in execution.
“We’re still confronting issues of immigration today,” he said. “We see immigrants come here, and we hate and scorn and fear them. That’s what the Irish were” 150 years ago. “Now everybody wants to be an Irishman.”
Admission to White's talk is $4 ($2 for members of the Springfield Museums); visitors are invited to bring lunch (cookies and coffee are provided).
For more information, call (413) 263-6800, ext. 488.
For more information about the opera, visit to www.gardenofmartyrsopera.com or http://www.academyofmusictheatre.com/
For more information about White, visit http://www.michaelcwhite.com/