O'Donoghue's Opera

37m

In this mock opera infused with gallows humour, Ronnie Drew and his band of bohemian merrymakers, The Dubliners, re-enact the execution ballad ‘The Night Before Larry Was Stretched’. Larry finds himself caught in a hangman’s noose as just reward for being ‘the best burglar in all Ireland’. Made in 1965, the film remained uncompleted and unseen until its restoration in 1998.