An opera in two or more acts, steeped in the “Anna Livia Plurabelle” portion of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, and drawing out and upon some of the 3,000+ references to opera that he fused into his flourishing text.

P L U R A B E L L E feeds off three fragments published a decade before Finnegans Wake appeared in book form: “Anna Livia Plurabelle” (1928, Crosby Gaige, New York); “Tales Told of Shem and Shaun” (1929, Black Sun Press, Paris); and “Haveth Childers Everywhere” (1930, Henry Babou and Jack Kahane, Paris). All three are in the public domain for all countries.

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PLURABELLE YouTube Channel

Video highlights coming soon!

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Composer & Librettist

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Begetter / Librettist

Thomas Peter O’Brien

Composer

Augusta Read Thomas

PLURABELLE Resources

One-Page Overview

Instrumentation, Performance Notes, etc.

Cast List

Libretto: with and without annotations

Looking Forward

Now that the first 40 minutes of PLURABELLE – 9 movements – have been composed, orchestrated, sung, played, and recorded (both audio and video), approaches to international commissioning opera companies is underway.

Fundraising, of course, continues.

Thematic Material

Nudity and Nakedness in Finnegans Wake

Women and Men Switching Places

Women Turning into Trees

Women Turning into Stone

Joyce’s Grand Operoar – excerpt

Friends & Supporters

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Founding Friends of PLURABELLE 

$25,000 +

Morden Yolles & Dylan Yolles

$10,000 to $24,999

LeeAnn Janissen & Peter Paul

$5,000 to $9,999

Patricia Baranek

Denny Creighton & Kris Vikmanis

Harry & Ann Malcolmson

Larry O’Brien

Sheilagh O’Connell

Ada Mae Wilson

$2,500 to $4,999

$1,000 to $2,499

Adriano Belli

Marta Braun

Anthony N. Doob

Roger Garland CM

Carrie & Reg Greenslade

Tim & Darka Griffin Foundation

Up to $999

Sara Angel CM

Robert Everett-Green

Ellen Karp

Kathleen Metcalfe

Craig Miller & Susan Meech

Colleen O’Brien

Siobhan O’Connell

Benjamin Salsberg

Ron Thompson & Jacquie Maund

Joanne Yolles

Anonymous (1)

Board of Directors

Plurabelle Opera Inc.

Miscellaneous

Cover Article on Gusty in Echelon

Click the button below for the March 2026 article, written by Kervy Delcy!

Joyce reads from Finnegans Wake

James Joyce reading a few pages from the chapter “Anna Livia Plurabelle” — the only recording we have of him reading from Finnegans Wake.

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“Anna Livia Plurabelle” artwork from Peter O’Brien’s
LOTS OF FUN WITH FINNEGANS WAKE

James Joyce references hundreds of rivers in this section of Finnegans Wake. I’ve “underlined” many of them with ~~~~~ and have painted or illustrated 21 of them: each flows into the other … the Liffey flows into the Euphrates flows into the Saskatchewan flows into the Colorado … flows into the Nile.

P L U R A B E L L E feeds off three fragments published a decade before Finnegans Wake appeared in book form: “Anna Livia Plurabelle” (1928, Crosby Gaige, New York); “Tales Told of Shem and Shaun” (1929, Black Sun Press, Paris); and “Haveth Childers Everywhere” (1930, Henry Babou and Jack Kahane, Paris). All three are in the public domain for all countries.