Underdog history comes to life through new music and old Irish songs in composer Donnacha Dennehy’s opera about the Great Famine of 1845-52. The story itself is rooted in Asenath Nicholson’s harrowing first-person account in Annals of the Famine in Ireland. Acclaimed ensemble Alarm Will Sound and celebrated Irish folk singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, imagines soprano Katherine Manley as Nicholson and Ó Lionáird as the voice of the voiceless, with instrumentalists integrated into the staging. Old recordings of traditional sean nós songs dovetail seamlessly with Dennehy’s score, while video clips of interviews with Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, and others underscore the political roots of this tragedy that brought a nation to its knees.