Festival announces change to the main opera programme
WEXFORD Festival Opera says that a change to this year’s opera programme will ‘offer audiences more of a variety’ come festival time in October.
In a change to one of the main evening operas, the previously announced Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber is being replaced by Dorilla in Tempe by Antonio Vivaldi.
Wexford Festival Opera is presenting this new, fully-scaled production in association with the prestigious Venice opera house, Teatro La Fenice.
The 2019 Wexford Festival Opera has been slimmed down to 13 consecutive days because of budget constraints and, according to the Festival, ‘the repertoire change is in keeping with the reduced artistic budget associated with the more compact 2019 Festival’.
Dorilla in Tempe will mark the return of director Fabio Ceresa (‘Best Director’, International Opera Awards 2016) and costume designer Giuseppe Paella, the key creative team behind the critically acclaimed operas Guglielmo Ratcliff (2015) and Maria de Rudenz (2016). This will be the first Baroque opera produced in Wexford in almost four decades.
Completing the main opera line-up this year is Jules Massenet’s ‘Don Quichotte’ and a double-bill that includes the world-premiere of the newly commissioned La Cucina by Irish composer Andrew Synnott, and Adina by Gioacchino Rossini, a co-production with Rossini Opera Festival in Italy.
AS well as the 12 main opera performances, there will also be a concert performance on the Bank Holiday Monday (October 28) of The Veiled Prophet by the Irish composer Charles Villiers Stanford, presented in association with Heritage Music Productions.
The 2019 festival has a Tuesday night start, running from October 22, to Sunday, November 3.