Butler, Thomas O'Brien (1861–1915), composer, was born Thomas Whitwell in November 1861 in Cahirciveen, in the south-west of Co. Kerry. Details of his early life are scarce but he appears to have been a man of independent means who travelled extensively. His musical education was undertaken principally in London at the Royal College of Music, where he enrolled in 1897, with his countryman, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (qv), and also with Sir Walter Parrat, though the record suggests he spent but a modest time there. At this time he was employing the name ‘Thomas Whitwell-Butler’. He afterwards studied for a period in Italy. His interest in travel took him further abroad, most notably to India, before he returned to settle on his estate in Kilmashogue beyond Rathfarnham in the Dublin mountains. In 1909 he engaged W. C. Pickeman, the designer of Portmarnock golf course, to lay out for him a nine-hole course, which survives to this day.
Whitwell was a ‘gentleman’ composer, using the pseudonym ‘O'Brien Butler’. His catalogue of surviving works is slight and includes a sonata for violin and piano based on Irish themes and some songs. His principal artistic achievement is Muirgheis, one of the first operas penned by an Irish composer resident in Ireland and dealing with an Irish subject. The work represents the first fruit of the attempt to realise a distinct national opera; the very publicity for the event proclaimed the première as an ‘Important production – First Irish Grand Opera’. The libretto was initially developed by O'Brien Butler but was later refined with the input of the novelist George Moore (qv) and the lyric poet Nora Hopper Chesson (qv). The opera was conceived and first performed in English and only later translated into Irish by Tadhg Ó Donnchadha (qv) (‘Torna’). It was given at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, in December 1903, with the participation of members of the Keating branch of the Gaelic League as dancers.
Muirgheis is essentially a love story in mythical garb, set in three acts. It is presented in the manner of a ballad opera, with predictable elements such as choruses of fairies and traditional dances; it also finds occasion to portray the composer's memory of a traditional lament. But the music is original rather than reliant on folk song. The opera provoked considerable critical response, though opinions were divided; it was valued more for the intention to realise a characteristic national expression than for the intrinsic merits of the work.
The success of Muirgheis led indirectly to O'Brien Butler's death. He was returning from a concert performance of the opera in New York when he perished in the sinking of the Cunard liner Lusitania in a German U-boat attack off the Old Head of Kinsale 7 May 1915.
More information on this entry is available at the National Database of Irish-language biographies (Ainm.ie).