Thomas O'Brien Butler (3 November 1861 – 7 May 1915; lost on the Lusitania), was an Irish composer who wrote the Irish-language opera Muirgheis (1903).
Baker's Dictionary[1] indicates that his surname was Whitwell; when he registered at the Royal College of Music in London, his name was noted as Thomas Whitwell-Butler.
He enrolled at the Royal College of Music in February 1897 at the rather advanced age of 35 and stayed for three terms only, studying composition with Charles Villiers Stanford and Walter Parratt.
[5] Butler died during World War I, when a German torpedo hit the passenger vessel Lusitania on 7 May 1915 just off the southern Irish coast near Kinsale.
Baker's Dictionary (1958 edition) claimed that he was on his way home from a concert performance of Muirgheis in New York, while other sources suggest he was returning from making "tentative arrangements for the production of his opera the following year".
[7] The Evening Ledger newspaper reported on 8 April 1915 under a photo of a moustachioed O'Brien Butler in a fez that "He wrote the music for the first purely Irish opera which has been produced in this country".
The plot of the opera abounds in Celticist clichés featuring "names redolent of Irish mythology such as Diarmuid, Donn, and a number of sea fairies", taking place "at the dawn of Christianity".