Let the adventures begin
IT says a lot about Wexford and its people that an opera festival conceived in an era marked by economic stagnation and emigration, and battered by two crippling recessions, has not only survived but reached its 67th year in relatively rude health.
As other festivals fell by the wayside, Wexford battened down the hatches when necessary, contracting and expanding as the need arose.
As a result, the Festival has emerged from the darkness of austerity into a brighter era where each October business benefits from an injection of many millions of euro, and the general mood of local people is lifted just at the moment the outside temperatures begin to drop.
This year’s Festival Opera runs to 17 days and across three weekends, the main events complemented by a lively and creative fringe and an overlapping Spiegeltent Festival on the Quayfront that seems to get better year by year.
Potential highpoints are many and varied. Opera buffs are surely intrigued by the technicalities of staging double bill L’Oracolo, by Franco Leoni, and Umberto Giordano’s Mala vita, and by the intensity both promise to deliver. Then there’s the prospect of Dinner At Eight which made its debut just 19 months ago in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is Pulitzer
Prize and Grammy Award winner William Bolcom’s fourth major opera and the 80-year-old composer will be in Wexford for the European premiere on Saturday, along with the librettist Mark Campbell. The following morning, in a rare treat, Bolcom and Campbell will host a ‘Meet The Creators’ forum in the Jerome Hynes Theatre to discuss their work and, presumably, field some incisive questions.
Elsewhere, the Spiegeltent offers an entirely different experience with its mix of new and old, music, comedy and theatrics. This year’s most anticipated act has to be the Boomtown Rats with Bob Geldof whose only (tenuous)
Wexford Festival link heretofore is that he was born in 1951 in the very month Dr Tom Walsh and his operaloving colleagues staged Wexford’s first festival.
There’s the usual rich tapestry of visual art on display this year, including two arresting and thoughtprovoking exhibitions depicting the aftermath of terrible conflict in Aleppo, through the mediums
of acrylics and digital photography. The Art Department of Wexford Co Council and Wexford Arts Centre are hosting ‘War Changes Its Address: The Aleppo Paintings’ by Brian Maguire at the council buildings in Carricklawn, while the Kamera 8 gallery in Rowe Street houses the associated ‘Another Day In Aleppo’, featuring work by Syrian photographer Giath
Taha. You’ll find a complete listing of exhibitions in this supplement.
If the art exhibitions bring an explosion of colour, so too do the traditional fireworks that define opening night.
Last year’s perfect storm (pardon the pun) combination of Ophelia, a power cut and a planning debacle are best forgotten as we count down to Friday night. The biggest gathering of the entire festival will be on the Quayfront when Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Josepha Madigan declares the 67 th Festival officially under way but the Dublin politician should be briefed that she’s very much playing second fiddle to the main event in the sky above her head.
Almost as old as the festival itself is the Guinness Singing Pubs competition which, this year. has attracted 26 entries. It’s a far cry from the heyday of the competition when more than 40 pubs competed, but that’s no reflection on the organisers or publicans, it’s simple mathematics - changing habits and spiralling overheads have
caused the taps to run dry at many local hostelries. On the upside, the Singing Pubs is still hotly contested and the talent on show arguably better than ever.
One Singing Pubs legend who will be missed this year is Joe McGuinness and his trusty tape recorder who has called time on a oneman effort which for four decades has seen him record every show in every pub for posterity. We salute your dedication Joe.
The times are a changing in the Opera House as well. David Agler, the Festival’s artistic director who has steered the ship through some difficult waters since taking the helm in 2005, has announced that the 2019 Festival will be his last. And the affable Ger Lawlor is stepping down as chairman at the end of the year.
But for now let’s focus on the 17 days and nights ahead. This special supplement, with its comprehensive day-byday guide, aims to be a good starting point for any Wexford Festival Opera adventure.
Where will your’s take you?