The Dublin opening night of a remarkable new cantata about the Irish civil war – Who’d Ever Think It Would Come to This? – has allowed the private thoughts and witness testimony of those who lived through the violence and upheaval to be heard aloud, after a century of silence, by an audience at the city’s O’Reilly Hall.
The libretto, which draws on contemporary diaries and letters, was written by the Observer journalist and acclaimed war correspondent Ed Vulliamy, who worked on the piece in collaboration with a University College Dublin archivist, Kate Manning.
