Recorded at West Wicklow Festival 'Winter Weekend', Latvian sisters Kristine and Margarita Balanas, a tour de force violin and cello duo, make their debut Irish performance.Īuthor Siobhán McGowan discusses her new book The Trial of Lotta Rae Tom Creed and Ann Devin of the Irish National Opera talk about their next production, Maria Stuarda, taking place in Cork, Dublin, and Limerick in June. Paul Herriott presents from the National Concert Hall, as the National Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Gerhard Markson, accompanies four young pianists for the 12th Dublin International Piano Competition Final. A good read, but confusing.James Joyce is famous as a novelist and short-story writer, but what about James Joyce the poet? Gerard Smyth talks with presenter Olivia O’Leary about the poetry of James Joyce. Revenge dominates, but love shines above it. Lotta is a tragic victim of male power, but wavers and becomes an on-and-off opium addict, suffragette and mother, and Linden a victim of corruption at the highest levels of society. I also struggled with characterisation and motivation. Had I known from the beginning that there was a supernatural element to it, I would have understood it better.

It took me a while to understand the author’s purpose. This one event leads them both on a course of shocking trauma and perdition, enemies in life and beyond, involving the actions of the Suffragette movement and the First World War. Although Linden realises he has been set up to fail, his acquiescence leads him on to greater influence and affluence, as a King’s Counsel (an honour granted by the monarch to distinguished lawyers) and eventually as a judge.

When her attacker is triumphantly acquitted with no stain on his character, Lotta is publicly shamed as a fallen woman, even a harlot. She trusts him implicitly and so tells him absolutely everything about her life. The case comes to court where she is defended by an up-and-coming barrister, William Linden. Her father is devastated and encourages her to press charges. During the gathering in 1909, Lotta is raped by a wealthy gentleman, an acquaintance of the owner.

The brewery where respectable working-class Lotta (Charlotte) Rae and her beloved father earn their living always holds a party on Halloween night.

The trial of lotta rae review