The Wexford Festival Opera has announced that Rosetta Cucchi will be its next artistic director. She will initiate her six-year tenure after the 2019 festival when current artistic director David Agler steps down. “I am happy and honored to be appointed Artistic Director of the Wexford Festival Opera. I have a great passion for the Festival and the people who {…}
Polish baritone Simon Mechlinski and Venezuelan baritone Gustavo Castillo are winners of an artistic bursary from the Wexford Festival Opera. The prizes, given to violinist and conductor Cillian O’Breacháin as well, were given on the final weekend of the festival. Castillo received The Aria Friends’ Bursary, Mechlinski was the recipient of The Gerard Arnhold Award, and O’Breacháin was honored with {…}
This year, Wexford Festival Opera presented the European premiere of William Bolcom and Mark Campbell’s opera “Dinner at Eight,” an operatic version of the stage play and Hollywood film of the same name. At the center of the opera is Millicent Jordan, who was portrayed in this version by soprano Mary Dunleavy. The American soprano has sung all over the {…}
St. Iberius Church on Wexford’s North Main Street is a delightful mid-18th-century building, with a Georgian interior, delightfully decorated in wedgewood blue and white. A balcony runs around three sides, providing seating for the congregation on two levels. With its intimate atmosphere and excellent acoustics, it makes an ideal venue for Wexford Festival Opera’s lunchtime recitals, given each day by {…}
The first thing that comes to mind when seeing that a “double bill” has been scheduled is often, “not another ‘Cav/Pag,’ not another example of lazy programming.” Luckily, however, this is the Wexford Festival and there is no chance of such a combination taking to the stage here, where innovative programming is the company’s raison d’etre. Deciding on a pair {…}
At this moment, opera in Ireland is really on the up. Over the last couple of years, the country has seen a significant number of developments, which has started to lift its profile. This year, for example, saw the inauguration of the Irish National Opera company, which has an ambitious vision for delivering opera, showcasing Irish singers and increasing the {…}
While the music of “La Fanciulla del West” would be difficult to mistake for anyone other than Puccini’s, the actual drama lacks the usual sacrificial or torturous death of the heroine, which characterizes his other famous operas. In fact, it is the woman who his cast in the role of savior, riding in to rescue the man she loves from {…}
The venue for Wexford Opera Festival “Opera Shorts” programme of piano accompanied, well-known operas in reduced form, is undoubtedly better suited to some works than others. Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale” is probably a perfect fit for the small stage erected especially for the festival in White’s Hotel, in which the audience are all relatively close to the stage, and therefore able {…}
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression of the 1930s, which caused poverty, unemployment and social dislocation on a grand scale in industrial economies across the globe. Although its impact on the poor was catastrophic, its effect on rich society was no less devastating; families lost their entire fortune overnight, with suicide often a result. It {…}
Every day up to 25,000 people disembark from the expanded cruise terminal in Venice and pour into the city’s narrow streets. Thousands more arrive by train and car. The water buses are so crowded that it would be preferable to walk, if it were not for the fact that the streets have become equally unbearable; so much so in fact, {…}
One of the many events that makes Wexford Festival Opera such a unique experience is the afternoon presentations of “Opera Shorts.” Normally, these are piano reductions of well-known operas, but recently they have started to broaden their scope. Last year’s festival successfully premiered a new opera, “The Dubliners” by Andrew Synnott, based on two of the short stories from James Joyce’s {…}