The First Presbyterian church hall in Castleblayney is an unlikely place to go to see a work of opera in progress. The names on the neatly tended gravestones tell the story of three centuries of hard-working Scottish planters who tamed the rough ground of these Monaghan borderlands. Across Lough Muckno and the low hills beyond begins south Armagh, the countryside of 30 years of the Northern Ireland "troubles".
Those "troubles" - or rather the political developments which most people hope are bringing them to a close - are the reason the Opera Theatre Company from Dublin and Opera Northern Ireland have brought their joint musical skills to Castleblayney. Opera Northern Ireland had been looking for money to take a schools project called "Let's make an opera" outside Belfast. The European Union's Peace and Reconciliation Fund, which has often found it hard to find viable projects to support in Border areas, offered assistance if the opera company went south and west to the Border country.
The required cross-Border link-up with the Opera Theatre Company was organised - easily enough given the history of collaboration between the two companies - and a team of animators headed into the operatically virgin territory of north Monaghan and south Tyrone.
She has lots of memories of hugs and bittersweet tears, as children who had spent an intense week in a workshop with animators and children from the other side of the Border, found it hard to take their leave from new-found heroes and friends.
The occasional outbreak of violence was not allowed to put a stop to the work. A Presbyterian-run school in Dundalk, with a good proportion of Catholic pupils, preferred to go to "neutral" Newry rather than south Armagh after the killing of a British soldier. A year later, it preferred not to cross the Border at all, after a spate of bomb scares. But the workshop went on in Dundalk anyway.
Last week, two young composers from Belfast, Stephen Deazley and Deborah Salem, and a Newry-born drama tutor, Bernie Meehan, were putting the finishing touches to The Story of Rosella the Wizard, a collectively composed operatic piece, in Castleblayney Presbyterian hall. It was the last work of the project's second season, since the EU money has, for now, run out. The three animators had arrived a week earlier. There to meet them were 30 pupils from Castleblayney Central national school, and from Cortamlat primary school, just across the Border in south Armagh.
"They've come an immense distance in a week - an initially livelier group might not have travelled nearly so far," said Deazley, pale with exhaustion after five strenuous days of passionate coaxing and role-playing and exhortation.
Opera Theatre Company director James Conway agreed. "Our work is about being creative, so it must find new ways to foster the creative spirit in children, children who may become our future audiences or may not. Opera is a living art form, it's not just about the music of dead guys, so this kind of thing is as important a part of our work as riding into town for a once-off touring performance of a piece like Cinderella."
Like a good showman, he could not resist the sales pitch to Border opera-lovers. "We'll be touring with Cinderella, starting in September, and we'll be coming to Enniskillen on October 7th . . ."
Scottish Opera for All, the education and outreach unit of Scotland's national opera company, is currently conducting a three-week cross-Border community workshop with 50 adults and young adults in Tyrone and Donegal. Facilitated by a partnership between Scottish Opera and the Border Reach Arts Project, this project is funded by the EU Peace and Reconciliation Programme, Strabane District Council and Donegal County Council. Participants receive expert coaching in music, drama, dance and visual arts, and experience first-hand the process of staging a professional production. Cliona's Wave is a 90minute tale of story-telling and transformation, composed by David Munro and directed by Jane Davidson. Three professional singers will also take part: James Drummond Nelson (tenor), Debra Stuart (mezzo-soprano) and Paul Featherstone (tenor). It will be performed at St Patrick's Hall, Strabane, Co Tyrone, Saturday, June 27th, at 8 p.m., and the following night at Doneyloop Hall, Doneyloop, Co Donegal, at 8 p.m.
