Music: Martin Hennessy
Swimming in the Dark/Act One
Directed by Michael Shell /Conducted by Tyler Readinger
With young artists from The Jacobs School of Music/Indiana University/ Produced by The Studios of Key West at the Helmerich Theater
Performances Friday 8PM March 21 and Saturday 8PM March 22, 2025
Helmerich Theater, Key West, Fl. Tickets and more information!
Music by Martin Hennessy, Libretto by Stephen Kitsakos
Adapted from the international bestselling novel by Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark is an opera about choice and political freedom. Set in Poland in 1980, it is an opera about a consuming love affair engulfed by a political thriller in a country being torn apart. At its center is a story of two young men, Ludwik and Janusz, who meet one summer after graduating from college and bond over their discovery of the American novelist James Baldwin’s seminal work of gay & bisexual literature, Giovanni’s Room. A tale of subversion, entrapment and identity set against the beauty and rapture of the Polish countryside at the rise of the Solidarity movement.
Performancs March 18-21, 2025
Royal Theatre of the Retiro in Madrid, Spain
Link to Teatro Real website for tickets
All taking place before her 23rd birthday this theatrical/operatic hybrid tells the story a young woman in 16th century Europe with superior intelligence and rich interiority who seeks to control her own destiny against tremendous odds.
Mary Stuart is overwhelmed by the gravity of events that follow her, Queen of Scots, Queen of France, aspirant to the throne of England, twice widowed, accused of murdering her second husband, fleeing from castles, prisons, victim of plots to end her life, architect of plots to overthrow Queen Elizabeth, defender of Roman Catholicism, lover of the arts, equestrian, poet, and great beauty.
Directed by José Luis Arellano García
Music by Martin Hennessy
Libretto by Irma Correa
Death of Classical The Crypt Sessions
Blythe Gaissert performs my setting of Nous Deux (Paul Éluard) for mezzo-soprano and string quintet with Sybarite 5
Only on NOVEMBER 29, 2023 at 7PM
Church of the Intercession 550 W 155th St New York, NY 10032
Wine & Cheese Reception: 7:00 - 8:00PM
Concert: 8:00PM - 9:00PM
Get Tickets
Fire Island Pines Art Project presents
The Pleasing Recollection/A Cabaret Opera
Sunday, May 29 at 6:00PM
at Whyte Hall
Cocktails on the Albert Lepage Pavilion beginning at 5:00PM
The Pleasing Recollection/A Cabaret Opera
Starring MICHAEL KELLY
Feinstein's 54/Below APRIL 5 - 6, 2022
Music by Martin Hennessy
Libretto by Stephen Kitskos
Directed by Murphy Davis
Music director, Benedicte Jourdois
In the mid-1970s, a young man (portrayed by As One’s Michael Kelly) lands ashore in Manhattan without a map. Negotiating his way into a life in the performing arts, The Pleasing Recollection chronicles his musical adventures as he charmingly stumbles into some of the music and theater giants of the era including Larry Kert, Leonard Bernstein, Charles Ludlum, and Aaron Copland. Librettist Stephen Kitsakos’s autobiographical story rolls forward with composer Martin Hennessy’s ingenious score. At the intersection of music and opera theater they create a playful, witty, and joyful tale.
Join us at Feinstein’s/54 Below for a performance that sings in the sensibility of contemporary musical theatre, but reminisces about a period in the lives of LGBTQ+ people that was both exhilarating and dangerous.
Buy tickets April 5, 2022 at 7PM
Buy tickets April 6, 2022 at 9:45PM
Praise for The Pleasing Recollection
"Weaving a range of musical genres together, leading from his classical background, Hennessy has come up with a unique and rather magical genre of his own. Landing in the space between art song and smoky supper club, The Pleasing Recollection is a classic song cycle performed as cabaret."
Sarah Downs, The Front Row Center
The Pleasing Recollection/A Cabaret Opera
Starring Michael Kelly with musical director, Benedicte Jourdois
Martin Hennessy, Music
Stephen Kitsakos, Libretto
Murphy Davis, DirectorFRI & SAT APR 1-2, 2022, 8PM/EVENTTICKETS COMING SOON
The Studios of Key WestHelmerich Theater, 533 Eaton Street
Blythe's CD Home hits #1 on Billboard
including my song Nous Deux which also made ASCAP's Friday playlist on Spotify
Praise from Opera News
"Martin Hennessy’s setting of Paul Eluard’s “Nous deux” lulls the listener with a tonal, post-Romantic approach, then grows stormy before returning to the comforting opening sonorities that represent two people at home wherever they find themselves, as long as they’re together."
Praise from the Financial Times
"Other highlights include a loving couple in the warm embrace of a string quintet in Martin Hennessy’s “Nous Deux."
Release Date:
May 7, 2021 by award winning record label, Bright Shiny Things
HOME is a collection of new works by eight composers and librettists representing diverse backgrounds and musical styles writing for acclaimed mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert.
Included in this CD is Nous Deux, my setting of Paul Eluard's incantatory love poem, for mezzo-soprano and string quintet, commissioned by Blythe especially for this CD.