Signum Records have released The First Child (the last in my trilogy of Dublin operas with Enda Walsh). Opera Magazine (with Opera News) says this of the recording: “The fine. poetic libretto renders much of this obliquely, allusively — a seemingly deliberate decision to leave it to Dennehy’s wonderful score to register the ghastly consequences, but in a way that allows the music to ‘universalize’ the pain, by providing a voice that seems to speak for other traumas, as yet unnamed. And that the score does, with extraordinary power and originality. Like a volcano waiting to explode, the music is shot through with ominous poundings, disruptive cross-rhythms , and startingly uncommon timbres (the small ensemble includes microtonal pianos)…the music’s brilliance is plainly a consequence of the diabolical energies that drive it.”