The Irish Baroque Orchestra and their conductor Peter Whelan bring Messiah back to Dublin, the city of its 1742 premiere, attempting to recreate the version heard at its first performance.
"I haven't heard him sing yet," Flannery confesses, in answer to the burning question, when we sit down after a rehearsal in Nuns Island theatre in Galway.
"My father spent most of his waking and sometimes sleeping hours in there...he'd ramble in and stumble out. I wrote this song after he passed at the fair young age of 62. The kind of tribute song he would have approved of. My father was a proud man. Loved his family and his drink in equal measure. My father showed his love shoulder to shoulder, not face to face."
