Author: Conor

Performance

22 September 2023, 7:30pm

For Culture Night 2023, the James Joyce Centre hosted a recital of Jonathan Brielle’s acclaimed off-Broadway musical Himself and Nora, which celebrates in song the love story of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle. Broadway writer and composer Jonathan Brielle performed numbers from the show in person and was accompanied by the Director of the James Joyce Centre, Darina Gallagher. Andrew Basquille presiding over the evening.

This bawdy, funny, uplifting, and melodic musical, sings the contemporary love story of James Joyce, the brilliant and hard-drinking Irish novelist, and Nora Barnacle, the woman who became his lover, partner, and muse for 37 years. Their love survived exile from Ireland, and the condemnation of the Catholic Church, and ultimately helped to create some of the greatest writing of the 20th century.

“A lively, sometimes lusty, spin through the love life, troubles and literary times of the great Irish writer…a robust romantic musical . . . The enjoyable score by Mr. Brielle, a veteran composer . . . meshes neatly with his libretto and embraces a rhythmic variety of ardent and melodic songs.” – New York Times

Broadway composer and lyricist Jonathan Brielle has worked with many hit shows including Foxfire with Jessica Tandy and is the former National Projects Director of the Songwriters Guild of America. Jonathan is the Artistic Director and Founder of Vala, a new platform dedicated to launching new musicals.

Performance

28 August 2023, 7:30pm

On Monday, 28 August 2023 at 7:30pm, American Mezzo-soprano Victoria Vargas and pianist James Barnett presented a program featuring the music of women composers of the Isles. The recital featured the music of Joan Trimble, Ina Boyle, Rebecca Clarke, Ethel Smyth, and Errollyn Wallen. Hailing from Minneapolis, Minnesota, the duo were performing in their European debut.

Victoria Vargas:

Mezzo-soprano Victoria Vargas has sung over twenty-five roles for the Minnesota Opera and has performed with the Opera Theater of Saint Louis, Chautauqua Opera, Sarasota Opera, Ash Lawn-Highland Festival, and others. Concert credits include performing with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Chautauqua Symphony, the Western New York Chamber Orchestra, South Dakota Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, La Jolla Symphony, Billings Symphony, Bach Society of Minnesota, and Minnesota Orchestra. She has placed seven times at the formerly titled Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions at both the district and regional levels, was a finalist at the Irene Dalis competition through Opera San Jose, and placed at the Schubert Club Competition. Her recent works include a workshop of the new work Generación Perdida by composer Jorge Sosa at the Opera America Center in New York City, performances of Handel’s Messiah, and concert performances for the Minnesota Opera. Ms. Vargas is currently an Assistant Professor of Voice at the University of Minnesota.

James Barnett:

A leading producer of Twin Cities recital programming, James Barnett is dedicated to bringing new and forgotten music to the next generation of audiences. He was the founding Artistic Director of the LOFT recital and was recently named as the new Artistic Director of Skylark Opera Theatre. Barnett has been a featured pianist with many companies and academic institutions across the country, including the Des Moines Metro Opera, Minnesota Opera, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Lakes Area Music Festival, Fargo-Moorhead Opera, The University of Minnesota, Grand Valley State University, Up North Vocal Institute, and OperaNEO. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Minnesota.

Performance

6 August 2023, 1pm

The James Joyce Centre was delighted to present Celtic Tides: A Story of the Irish Coming to Newfoundland, with traditional Irish/Newfoundland music performed by the Celtic Fiddlers of Newfoundland, Canada, on 6 August 2023 at 1pm.

Book Launch

14 July 2023, 6:30pm

The James Joyce Centre was delighted to host the launch of Modern Irish and Scottish Literature: Connections, Contrasts, Celticisms by Dr. Richard Alan Barlow. The event will feature an introduction by Dr. Nicholas Allen from the University of Georgia.

The book examines the various ways Irish and Scottish literature have influenced each other from the 1760s to the contemporary era. By studying work in a variety of genres from figures such as James Macpherson, Walter Scott, Sydney Owenson, Augusta Gregory, W.B. Yeats, Fiona Macleod/William Sharp, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley MacLean, and Seamus Heaney in their respective political and cultural contexts, Modern Irish and Scottish Literature also provides a new account of the characteristics and phases of literary Celticism within Romanticism, the Celtic Revivals of Ireland and Scotland, Modernism, and beyond.

Dr. Richard Alan Barlow is an Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the Academic Director of the Trieste Joyce School. He received his PhD from Queen’s University Belfast. His articles have appeared in journals such as Irish Studies Review, James Joyce Quarterly, Philosophy and Literature, and Scottish Literary Review. He has also been a contributor to The Irish Times and The Guardian. He is the author of The Celtic Unconscious: Joyce and Scottish Culture (Notre Dame University Press, 2017). Together with Paul Fagan, he is also editing a collection titled Finnegans Wake: Human and Nonhuman Histories, which is forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press in 2024.

Book Launch

18 May 2023, 6:00pm

On Thursday, 18 May 2023 at 6:00pm, the James Joyce Centre hosted the book launch of James Joyce and the Irish Revolution: The Easter Rising as Modern Event by Luke Gibbons. The evening was introduced by Professor Emer Nolan of Maynooth University.

Published by The University of Chicago Press, James Joyce and the Irish Revolution is a provocative history of Ulysses and the Easter Rising as harbingers of decolonization.

When revolutionaries seized Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising, they looked back to unrequited pasts to point the way toward radical futures—transforming the Celtic Twilight into the electric light of modern Dublin in James Joyce’s Ulysses. For Luke Gibbons, the short-lived rebellion converted the Irish Renaissance into the beginning of a global decolonial movement.

James Joyce and the Irish Revolution maps connections between modernists and radicals, tracing not only Joyce’s projection of Ireland onto the world stage but also how revolutionary leaders like Ernie O’Malley turned to Ulysses to make sense of their shattered worlds.

Coinciding with the centenary of both Ulysses and Irish independence, this book challenges received narratives about the rebellion and the novel that left Ireland changed, changed utterly.

Luke Gibbons has taught as Professor of Irish Studies at Maynooth University and the University of Notre Dame and has published widely on Irish culture and criticism.

Lecture Series

25 April 2023, 6:30pm

The first lecture in our Spring/Summer Lecture Series was FRAMED IN CORK: JAMES JOYCE’S CORK WITH Dr. FLICKA SMALL on 25 April 2023 at 6:30pm.

Joyce’s paternal grandparents, James Augustine Joyce and Ellen O’Connell, both natives of Cork City, married in Cork in 1847. Their son John Stanislaus was raised in Cork – on the boats in the harbour, in the streets with his university comrades, in the theatre and the music hall. In this talk, Dr. Flicka Small explored the many Cork connections within Joyce’s life and literature.

This year Flicka is bringing James Joyce back to his Rebel Roots for Bloomsday 2023. If you’re interested in more background about the family in Cork or would just like to hear about the exciting events and topics taking place in Cork on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th June, come along on Tuesday, April 25th at 6:30pm.

Performance by JoyceStagers

13 April 2023, 7pm

On April 13th, 2023 at 7pm, the JoyceStagers presented their work, Myles of Joyce, at the James Joyce Centre. Myles of Joyce is a highly entertaining performance based on the connections between James Joyce and the writings of Brian O’Nolan, aka, Flann O’Brien, aka., Myles na Gopaleen. This performance included ‘The Real Story of Ulysses‘, according to Flann O’Brien.

The JoyceStagers have been presenting adaptations from various episodes of Ulysses at locations in Dublin since 2010. These include an annual performance of ‘The Funeral of Paddy Dignam’ at Glasnevin cemetery on Bloomsday.

https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/joycestagers-present-myles-of-joyce-tickets-569597620817

Book Lunch of the 6th Edition of “Cut & Paste”

30 March 2023, 4:30pm

On Thursday, 30th of March, the James Joyce Centre hosted the launch of “Remembering Arthur Griffith”, the 6th edition of Cut and Paste, a miscellany celebrating the life and legacy of Arthur Griffith. Contributors include Felix Larkin, Brian Maye, Owen McGee, Michael Glenn Murphy, Mick O’Dea, Cormac O’Hanrahan, and Des Gunning.

Speakers at the event included historian Felix M. Larkin, TD Matt Shanahan, and Des Gunning.

The book is edited by Cormac O’Hanrahan with Des Gunning (Joyceborough) and printed by Printwell Books.

Copies can be ordered online at printwellbooks.com.

Performance by Sebastian Barry and Vyvienne Long

21 March 2023, 7pm

We were delighted to mark a new commission by composer Roger Doyle for Clonmel Junction Arts Festival 2023 as part of a joint launch with the composer on Tuesday, March 21st at 7pm in the James Joyce Centre.

Since 2021, Doyle has been working on music inspired by Joyce’s work. Finnegans Wake: Suite of Affections Vol. 2 was launched by playwright and novelist Sebastian Barry, with Vyvienne Long – one of the many top Irish actors participating on the album – performing an extract.

8 March 2023

In celebration of International Women’s Day, the James Joyce Centre hosted ‘Reading Molly,’ a public reading of Molly Bloom’s famous soliloquy from Ulysses. This extraordinary final chapter, ‘Penelope’, brings out all the wit and passion of one of the finest passages of writing in modern literature.

From 11am to 1pm guests dropped into the Maginni Room to read ‘Penelope’. Tea and seedcake were served and some guests even sat on a bed set up in the middle of the room, one that resembled Molly’s.

November 10 2022

The James Joyce Centre and the Georgian Embassy to Ireland was pleased to host Ulysses at 100: A Shared Celebration of James Joyce, Georgia and Ireland on November 10th, 2022. The event was attended by ambassadors accredited to Ireland, representatives of the Oireachtas and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Honorary Consulate of Georgia in Ireland, members of the Georgian-Ireland Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group, Senator Joe O’Reilly, and Senator Gerard Crockwell. Georgian Ambassador Giorgi Zurabashvili presented James Joyce’s works and studies, including a recent Georgian translation of Ulysses, to Director Darina Gallagher.

A fragment from the movie ballet Lucia’s Room, filmed by Prof. David Maziashvili and Mariam Alexidze about James Joyce’s daughter Lucia, was screened. Ivane Javakhishvili, Professor of the Western European Languages and Literature Institute of Western European Studies and Literature, addressed the audience from Georgia via Zoom, as did Maia Kiasashvili, the translator of several of Joyce’s work, Prof. David Maziashvili, and a young Georgian-in-Ireland Ambassador Karlo Kovzanadze.

October 24 2022

The theme of this composite artistic event is concomitant and Dr. Caroline Elbay’s talk will address how, from the ‘bat-like soul’ of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to the ’little bats [who] don’t tell’ in Ulysses and the ‘bawk of bats’ in Finnegans Wake, Joyce’s alignment of the bat with female characters essentially debunks negative stereotypes, thus placing the bat in its rightful place as a symbol of the creative spirit and positioning women in an environment of growing self-empowerment and liberation in the modern world.

Dr. Caroline Elbay’s talk will take place on Monday, 24 October at 7pm.

The exhibition will run from 24 October to 7 November and will feature original art and film by Dr. Joyce Garvey that are inspired by the myriad references to bats across the Joycean oeuvre and also by Lucia Joyce’s illustrations.

20 October 2022

As part of our Ulysses 100 programme of events, the James Joyce Centre and the Peruvian Embassy in Ireland will co-host a unique celebration of 100 years of two masterpieces of modern literature: Trilce by the Peruvian poet César Vallejo and Ulysses by James Joyce.

César Vallejo (1892-1938) was a Peruvian poet and writer considered one of the greatest exponents of literature in Peru and one of the most innovative in twentieth-century poetry. In 1922, he published his famous work Trilce, one of the most important works of the Latin American avant-garde. His poems revolutionized poetics in the Spanish language and conveyed many emotions as they addressed childhood, the absence of the mother, love, and prison, highlighting the importance of solidarity and empathy with the suffering of others.

After introductory remarks by the Peruvian Ambassador Ana María Sánchez Vargas De Ríos, Professor Jose Antonio Mazzotti of Tufts University and Professor Sam Slote of Trinity College Dublin will deliver lectures on the relationship between the two writers. We will then have a discussion moderated by Dr. Josh Quezada Newman of Trinity College Dublin.

José Antonio Mazzotti is Professor of Spanish Culture and Civilization & Professor of Latin American Literature, Department of Romance Studies, Tufts University. He is Director of Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana and President of the International Association of Peruvianists. Sam Slote is Professor of English at Trinity College Dublin. His most recent book, co-written with Marc Mamigonian and John Turner, is Annotations to James Joyce’s Ulysses (Oxford University Press, 2022). Josh Quezada Newman is an adjunct instructor of English at Trinity College Dublin and an assistant at the Centre.