Mass: New show merges opera, queer sexuality and religion in Belfast

Composer Conor Mitchell is in a bit of flurry. He’s under pressure to put the finishing touches to an orchestral score, which will form the centrepiece of Mass, a large-scale “experiential” musical and visual jigsaw, whose individual pieces appear, on first sight, to be anything but a snug fit.

It is the latest offering from The Belfast Ensemble, a collective of established, Belfast-based artists he set five years ago to explore new ways of looking at music. In that time, it has made some of the most thrilling, artistically challenging work seen in the city.

Mass is the headline event of Belfast’s 15th Outburst Queer Arts Festival, which runs from November 12th to 20th. It is constructed around the Latin liturgy of the Catholic Mass and focuses on the concept of ritual in many and varied forms. The score will be played by the 64-strong Ulster Orchestra, with key liturgical segments sung by Giselle Allen, Sarah Richmond, Christopher Cull and John Porter.

In the hands of video artist Conan McIvor, this immersive musical experience will be enveloped in projected films by internationally acclaimed film-makers from Egypt, Brazil, Syria, the United States, Lebanon, Jamaica and India. Many of them live in difficult environments, where their sexual identities and creative subject matter put their very existence under serious threat.

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It was Abomination, the audacious popular opera about homophobic attitudes within the Democratic Unionist Party, that brought Mitchell and his ground-breaking artistic vision to long overdue international attention.

“Abomination examined new ways into story, words and NI [Northern Irish] queer politics,” he says. “It was built to challenge the sanctified, museum-like relics of long dead Italian/German operas which, I feel, mean little to Belfast. It offered another way into opera as immediate and visible and relevant.

“It was about to do a run at London’s Southbank Centre. Then Covid-19 struck. I was on stage, measuring up, when I noticed things going a little crazy around me. Everyone was on their phones, looking very anxious. Next thing, Boris Johnson called the first lockdown and I was on a plane back to Belfast.”

Mitchell, who was recently appointed artist-in-residence at Wexford Festival Opera, says that the Ulster Orchestra’s collaboration in Mass was key. Last year he made an orchestral video with them, called Democracy Dances and several conversations followed, during which he was struck by an emerging spirit of engagement and musical empathy.

“For our national symphony orchestra to say yes to something of this scale, and to commit to the same vagabonds who made Abomination was seismic and brave. They wanted to come on board a journey which would encourage people to see the orchestra in a new way.

'I had a traditional Catholic upbringing and there are themes in the Mass that I still cling to'

“For me, as always, this means taking a familiar musical form, like an opera or a symphonic Mass, and stretching the rubber band, not ripping it apart but pulling it as far as I can to seek out new distances. By making the orchestra the centre of the piece, we have inverted the operatic form.

“I also wanted to create a visual dynamic which would take us out of Belfast and into the lives of queer people across the world. The films explore, challenge and even reject the text, its faith, its story, its themes. The sound is experienced by seeing its effect on people from thousands of miles away. We, the audience, occupy the space between.”

Mass will be staged in the vast, abandoned space that was the Belfast Telegraph’s print room; a place which, in its heyday, followed its own daily round of rites and rituals.

“The place still has a heavy industrial vibe,” says Mitchell. “The building is in a bad way but I wanted to retain its distressed look. For years, the print room was a hotbed of frantic activity and deafening sounds, and soon it will be again.

“It’s awash with local connections. It turns out that Giselle’s [Allen] father worked there as a hot-metal typesetter back in the day. I like to think of all the stories that came off those presses – the introduction of section 28, the queer ceilidh at Queen’s University, Iris Robinson condemning homosexuality as ‘an abomination’.”

Mitchell views the event of Mass as more important and culturally significant than the piece itself. He has a sense that the ground is shifting around the northern arts sector and, after years of artistic stagnation, a wind of change is beginning to blow.

'For me, belief in something – a higher power – is not religion. It is more the search for meaning'

“It’s amazing to think that the Ulster Orchestra is performing new music in the city centre, headlining a gay festival, playing the Catholic Mass to dance music in a venue that’s used for raves.

“Mass seeks to put spirituality back on the table while surrounding it with experiences of carnival, Mardi Gras, street protest, Pride marches, festivals, the club scene. One minute you’re listening to dance beats, the next you’re drowning in the Sanctus.

“I would argue that almost everyone who grew up here has done so with some kind of religious doctrine in their blood. I had a traditional Catholic upbringing and there are themes in the Mass that I still cling to. Your beliefs may change as you get older but there is still a sense of community that lingers, the act of coming together in praise and celebration. That and the central themes of resurrection and rebirth are crucial in the lives of gay and trans people.”

Mitchell is upfront about the piece being deeply personal.

“For me, belief in something – a higher power – is not religion. It is more the search for meaning,” he says.

“There are pauses in the piece for reflection and contemplation. As a gay man, finding myself and being reborn as an authentic ‘me’ has always been held in a state of balance between the deep faith background of my childhood and wider society, things that I reacted against, then embraced, then challenged, then accepted. All those things are present here in this music.”

Performances of Mass are on November 17th and 18th at 7pm and 9pm at The Telegraph Building, Royal Avenue, Belfast.

Outburst Queer Art Festival runs from November 12th to 20th. Programme and booking information can be found at www.outburstarts.com