Opera’s one hit wonder
QUESTION In the run-up to the Six Nations rugby on February 4 there was a piece of classical music playing as the fans came up on screen. What was it? THIS was the intermezzo from the Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni. In July 1888, Mascagni learned that enterprising Milanese music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno was sponsoring a one-act opera competition, offering a substantial prize.
The best three would be staged in Rome at Sonzogno’s expense. Mascagni adapted a popular passionate Easter morning love tragedy by Giovanni Verga.
It took Mascagni two months to compose before sending it to his friend Giacomo Puccini who told him it didn’t have a chance of winning. Fearing failure, he put the music in a drawer where it would have remained had his wife not secretly mailed it to Sonzogno.
In all, 73 operas were submitted, and on March 5, 1890, the judges selected the final three: Niccola Spinelli’s Labilia, Vincenzo Ferroni’s Rudello, and Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana.
Cavalleria Rusticana, with its stirring melodies, including the famous Easter Hymn, and tightly constructed plot was unanimously voted the competition winner. On May 17, 1890, it had its premiere in Rome where it received more than 40 curtain calls; in less than a year it had been performed all over Europe.
The opera made both Sonzogno and Mascagni’s fortune. It was one of the tragedies of Mascagni’s career that, although he wrote 15 other operas, none came close to matching the success of Cavalleria Rusticana. ‘It is a pity I wrote Cavalleria first,’ he said, ‘for I was crowned before I became king.’
Tina Bayer, North Yorkshire. QUESTION What is the most expensive Irish whiskey on the market? IF you buy a full collection of Midleton Very Rare vintages, distilled between 1984 and 2016, it’s going to set you back at least €30,000, making this the most expensive Irish whiskey on the market.
Midleton Very Rare is a premium whiskey made by Irish Distillers at the new Midleton distillery in east Co. Cork. It’s a mix of pot still whiskey and grain whiskey, and is matured for between 12 and 20 years in American oak barrels that had previously been used for bourbon. Since these vintages were launched in 1984, they’ve won many awards and have had excellent reviews from whiskey connoisseurs. Each year, a new bottling is created by the master distiller in Midleton. The master distiller who created the Very Rare vintages was Barry Crockett, who said that his aim was always to produce the best possible whiskey. He retired in 2013.
The vintage is produced in very limited quantities, usually fewer than 2,500 cases a year, making it very collectible and very expensive. Each bottle is individually numbered and signed by the master distiller, who is now Brian Nation.
In September 2014, to commemorate the 30th, or pearl, anniversary of Midleton Very Rare whiskey, Barry Crockett came out of retirement to join Brian Nation in producing a special anniversary edition, the Pearl, of which just 117 bottles were produced. A bottle of this very special whiskey will set you back around €11,000.
Besides the Very Rare vintages, the Midleton Distillery also produces a number of single pot whiskeys, including Midleton Dair Ghaelach, 15- to 22-year-old pot still whiskey matured in bourbon barrels; in a first for the Irish whiskey industry, it was finished for a year in virgin Irish oak barrels.
Those Midleton Very Rare whiskeys are at the top end of the scale, and there’s quite a gap between them and other old whiskeys that are still available. If you opt for a Kilbeggan duty-free sample – a very rare bottle produced at the old distillery in Kilbeggan, Co. Westmeath, in 1952 and bottled nine years later in 1961 – will set you back around €3,500. These very rare duty-free samples have a label on the front of the bottle showing not only the name of the owner, but the customs officer responsible for certifying it.
Another very rare whiskey is Mitchell’s Green Spot ten-yearold whiskey from the 1950s, which at current prices costs around €3,000. Around 100 years ago, the old Jameson distillery in Dublin started selling whiskey to Mitchells, the Dublin wine merchants who have been trading for more than 200 years. Mitchells sold this whiskey under its own Green Spot brand. It’s one of the few old brands sold by wine and spirit merchants that is still available today and it has certainly maintained its price over the years.
While Irish whiskey is meant to be drunk, if the right whiskey is kept long enough, it’s value will soar. Irish whiskey is fast becoming a very valuable collectible and, in general, the older the whiskey, the higher value it will have.
In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, the island of Ireland had about 200 distilleries. By the mid-1960s, only a handful remained, but thankfully, during the past two decades, there’s been a huge reawakening of the Irish whiskey business and a big increase in Irish whiskey sales around the world.
Many new distilleries have either opened or are due to open, such as the one in Slane, Co. Meath. Lord Henry Mountcharles started this project with a big US distilling company that produces Jack Daniel’s and Southern Comfort.
A €44million distillery has been built on the Slane estate. The US company now owns all the shares in the whiskey company, although Lord Mountcharles and his family are still very much involved.
Slane whiskey is being launched this year, starting with Ireland next month. In time, Slane Castle will be as renowned for its whiskey as its rock concerts. Among the plethora of new distilleries being built or planned, Diageo plans to start distilling whiskey on the Guinness site at St James’s Gate in Dublin in 2019. Not far away, the Dublin Liberties distillery is under construction and it’s due to be ready in the spring of next year.
Although some near-contemporary vintages, such as those from the Midleton distillery, can command very high prices, if a bottle from a long-vanished distillery comes up for auction, it’s also going to go for a fine price. In March 2016, a bottle from the Dublin Whiskey Distillery, on Jones Road, near Croke Park, which lasted from 1873 until 1926, sold at auction for €15,000.
For many years now, vintage Scotch has been a collector’s item, with suitably premium prices, so now it looks as if Irish whiskey is becoming equally valuable. Kelly Martin, Limerick.
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