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Reviews, Stage Reviews

Wexford Festival Opera 2024 Review: The Critic

https://operawire.com/wexford-festival-opera-2024-review-the-critic/

(Photo: Patricio Cassinoni) History has not been kind to Charles Villiers Stanford’s reputation as an opera composer. During his lifetime he wrote nine complete operas, which, apart from his comic opera “Seamus O’Brien,” was met with limited success. Today, they are rarely performed, and none have found their way into the mainstream repertoire. In 2019, the Wexford Festival Opera produced {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Wexford Festival Opera 2024 Review: Lady Gregory In America

https://operawire.com/wexford-festival-opera-2024-review-lady-gregory-in-america/

(Photo: Pádraig Grant) In 1907, J.M. Synge’s play “The Playboy of the Western World” caused rioting when it premiered at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. It was not so much the portrayal of its central character, Christy Mahon, who turns up in a Mayo town, claiming to be on the run for killing his father, but the reaction of the local women, {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Wexford Festival Opera 2024 Review: Le Convenienze Ed Inconvenienze Teatrali

https://operawire.com/wexford-festival-opera-2024-review-le-convenienze-ed-inconvenienze-teatrali/

(Photo: Patricio Cassinoni) At his best, Donizetti is a master of the comic opera, with works such as “Don Pasquale” and “L’Elisir d’Amore” still playing to packed houses almost 200 years after their premieres. Others, however, are less well-known; his 1831 one-act farce, “Le Convenienze ed Inconvenienze Teatrali,” being a case in point. Few people will have heard of it, {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Wexford Festival Opera 2024 Review: I Pagliacci

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 (Photo: Pádraig Grant) Each year the Wexford Factory, the festival’s young artist program, produces an opera for the main stage, allowing its participants to gain experience in major roles as well as providing them with the opportunity to play smaller roles in the company’s headline productions. In previous year’s, the Factory’s productions have included successful performances of operas such as {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Wexford Festival Opera 2024 Review: Puccini – Man Of The Theatre

https://operawire.com/wexford-festival-opera-2024-review-puccini-man-of-the-theatre/

(Photo: Padraig Grant) To mark the hundredth anniversary of the death of Giacomo Puccini, the Wexford Festival Opera commissioned William Niall Morris to create a short work celebrating the composer’s life and music. The result was a short piece, lasting about an hour, entitled “Puccini: Man of the Theatre,” which essentially amounted to a selection of his greatest hits linked {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Wexford Festival Opera 2024 Review: The Elixir of Love

https://operawire.com/wexford-festival-opera-2024-review-the-elixir-of-love/

 (Photo: Padraig Grant) Set just off the waterfront in Wexford town centre is The Grain Store, an old, restored warehouse, which last year hosted the festival’s first community opera. It is a project that enables the local population to engage directly with the festival by creating and presenting its own production with the help of workshops that take place throughout {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Wexford Festival Opera 2024 Review: Le Maschere

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(Photo: Patricio Cassinoni) The Wexford Festival Opera is well-known for its commitment to exploring neglected and unearthing forgotten works written by both well-known and lesser-known composers. Although it has met with considerable success in this endeavor, inevitably there have been one or two failures along the way; after all, many such operas are not performed for very good reasons! Two {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Wexford Festival Opera 2023 Review: Zoraida di Granata

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(Photo: Clive Barda) Anyone who has heard Opera Rara’s recording of Donizetti’s “Zoraida di Granata” must have been very excited by the Wexford festival’s decision to put on a fully staged production. It is a veritable bel canto feast with beautiful arias and ensemble singing, stretching over a period of approximately three hours. “Zoraida di Granata” premiered in Rome’s Teatro {…}