Opry le Daniel filming

The first week of April I took a vacation to the United Kingdom to see Mairéad perform in Opry le Daniel and I had such an amazing time!  I spent four nights in Derry and three nights in London.  Derry is a beautiful city, very fun to walk around and explore, and I have really enjoyed my time spent there each time I'm there.  It's inevitable that I'll keep traveling back to Derry since that's where Mairéad is from - I already have my next trip there booked for her solo concert next month!  Since my flight for this trip was going through London and I hadn't been there in 18 years, I also spent two days in London and had a lot of fun sight-seeing there.

Attending the Opry le Daniel filming was so much fun and Mairéad performed so beautifully!  Opry le Daniel is TV concert series hosted by Irish singer Daniel O'Donnell and showcasing Irish artists.  They filmed six episodes in three nights at the Millennium Forum, with the episode Mairéad is in filmed on night two.  These episodes will be aired in Ireland/UK in November & December and will be available to watch online in the US.  If you want to watch it spoiler-free, then stop reading now!

The Millennium Forum was set up with all the seats on the floor removed, so the floor was filled with tables for the families of the performers.  It was really cool looking and so different from the Celtic Woman concert I saw there last summer where it was a standard theatre set up.  The stage was also a really cool set up with four tiers - the band was on the top three tiers and the singers were on the bottom tier.  I was sitting in the balcony, front row center.  At the very beginning of the night they filmed all the crowd shots.  It'll be so fun to see if I end up on TV! 

I saw two episodes filmed that night and each episode featured three artists plus the host.  Each artist sang three songs and the host sang songs at the beginning and in between each performer.  Then at the end they sang group songs with everybody who was in the episode.  The episode Mairéad is in was Celtic Country and was meant to be filmed first, but they switched the order and it was second.  That was fabulous because the artists in the first episode sang two group songs, but in the second episode they sang four group songs since it was the end of the night and they just kept going!  More time with Mairéad on stage! 

Mairéad was the second to last performer of the night.  She wore a gorgeous sparkly green dress.  Her first song was her original called Sitting in the Sky.  So so beautiful and she puts so much emotion into it.  She introduced the song explaining that she had written it for her Dad after he passed away.  I really love that song, she's an amazing writer!  If you've been following along on her stage it concerts, she sang that song on stage it last April.  Her second song was a really lovely rendition of The Water is Wide.  Her third song was an absolutely stunning Danny Boy.  She hit this insanely awesome high note at the end of the song (you all know the one!) and the crowd erupted into thunderous applause!  It was so amazing to be part of!  Daniel came out and joked that he would need to be wearing about 10 g-strings to be able to hit a note like that - LOL!  And then....there had been a technical difficulty with filming and they needed Mairéad to sing Danny Boy again!  Heck yes, I love hearing her sing as much as possible!  Same thunderous applause at the end of the song - I may be biased, but it sure sounded to me like the loudest and most enthusiastic applause of the entire night!  What a fabulous performance of all four songs that she sang!

At the end of the night, they had Daniel plus all the artists from that episode on stage together singing group songs.  That was Mairéad, Tommy Fleming, and The Tumbling Paddies.  The group song that they had planned in advance was Leaving of Liverpool.  Really fun song and I knew that one from The Gothard Sisters.  Then they went into unplanned songs - it seems like this is something Daniel does because the first episode filmed also had a planned song and an unplanned one.  The first unplanned one of Mairéad's group was The Wild Rover.  It was really fun to watch because they just had anybody on stage jumping in and singing whatever they knew of the song, they were dancing around, plus the audience was singing along as well.  And then they just kept going!  They sang Hard Times Come Again No More (at least I think that's what it was called) and then they still kept going and sang Galway Girl.  They were all having so much fun on stage and the crowd was having a blast! I'm curious to see how many of these group songs end up in the episode when it airs.  We'll find out later this year!

The filming ran just about four hours.  It was such a fabulous time, I'm so glad I was there for it!  I also got to spend time with Mairéad and her Mum having really lovely conversation.  Overall, a really incredible vacation!  I feel so fortunate that I'm able to do things like this.  Everything has just lined up perfectly in my life that allows me to do this - I have the vacation time, I have the money, I'm able to travel.  I absolutely love seeing Mairéad perform, love that I've gotten to know her so well, love spending time talking with her.  All of it is just wonderful and I'm going to keep going back for more!  Five weeks from now Gregg and I will be in Derry together to attend Mairéad's solo concert - can't wait!

 

Sounds like it was a fun time with Mairéad and she got a good amount of time on stage. It definitely sounds like a Daniel O'Donnell show. The "Rock 'n' Roll" show DVD (featuring Susan) has a whopping 43 tracks and runs 2 hours and 40 minutes. That's like Stranger Things Season 4 finale length!

Tommy Flemming is fantastic too. He's got one of my favourite non-CW voices and performs a lot of good songs. His vibrato is amazing. Leaving of Liverpool and Hard Times are my favourite tracks on multiple Tommy Flemming albums. The Long Journey Home and Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears are also must-listens.

Fun side-fact: Tommy Flemming's The Essential Collection album also ran around 2 hours and 40 minutes. I'm wondering if we might get an Opry DVD of comparable length. That would be around 27 minutes run time per episode, which isn't far off from what you'd get in an hour during a PBS pledge drive, if that's the route it takes when airing on this side of the pond. It will be interesting to see how much airs on TV.

 

Thanks for the write up! Sounds fun! We are all Irish green with envy!

My favorite part of your trip report is this:

She hit this insanely awesome high note at the end of the song (you all know the one!) and the crowd erupted into thunderous applause!

I personally refer to that as Mairead "letting it go" or "letting it fly".

Hope you took lots of pics. (I've already seen one.    )

I do have photos of how the venue was set up and of spending time with Mairéad! I'm going to make a late dinner now and then I'll come back on and post photos for you guys! There was a strict no photos allowed during the concert that the ushers were enforcing so I didn't even try to sneak any during the performance - I just watched and enjoyed!

Here's a link to a Facebook write-up. I think this guy was connected to the Opry le Daniel production somehow, but I don't know for sure. So fun that he put me in this write-up!

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid07gqC1JKFE79x1kg9S7SupSYCunaFw6bZSrAP6yX6pzXvHPA2HA8uUCfHM2DWv9m1l&id=100003600778706&mibextid=Nif5oz

Tom, I don't think I realized that Susan has done one of these filmings previously. That's so cool, I'll have to look that up!  Tommy Fleming was really good, as were all the artists I saw. I really enjoyed the entire night of performances! You all know who my favorite was of course 😉😍

Here are some photos! Such an amazing time!

Wow! Those are great pics! Thanks for sharing! You guys look like besties! 

The setting looks really cozy & intimate. Please bump this thread up when you find out the show is available on-line. Thanks!

Thank you so much! I love that I've gotten to become friends with Mairéad 🥰  I sure will post the link here when the concert is available to view online! You guys will love it, it was fabulous!

The Opry Le Daniel episode that Mairéad is in and I attended in Derry back in April is airing tomorrow night, September 26th, at 9:30pm Irish time! If you download the TG4 Player app, the previous two weeks of episodes are in there, so looks like it'll come into the app pretty quickly after airing. It may also be viewable live in the app, but I'm not quite sure if it's live worldwide or only in Ireland. Either way though, it'll be in that app very soon!

I loved being at that performance sooooo much! It was so much fun and Mairéad sang sooooo gorgeously! Can't wait to watch it again and for you all to see it!

Mairéad has a preview on Facebook here:

https://fb.watch/nhliJjDs5F/?mibextid=Nif5oz

Here's the link to the episode that Mairéad is in:

https://www.tg4.ie/ga/player/seinn/?pid=6337805555112&title=Opry%20le%20Daniel%20ar%20Thuras&series=Opry%20le%20Daniel%20ar%20Thuras&pcode=668554&genre=Ceol

Mairéad sings 3 solos in the middle of the episode and the group song at the end. I've been really enjoying watching this over the past week! I've spotted myself in the audience as well - I'm in the front row of the balcony. I do wish this episode really showed how loudly the crowd erupted after Mairéad sang Danny Boy and basically blew the roof off the place. The editing scaled that crowd reaction down quite a bit, but that was one of those epic moments that I'll always remember experiencing. And it happened not once, but twice since they did a re-take of that song! Also, as I suspected, only one of the four group songs is in the episode.

This sure was an amazing time being there to see Mairéad! I loved it so much and it's so great to get to watch the filming of it!