Paul Herriott, the host of Opera Night on RTÉ lyric fm, writes about his love for Wexford Festival Opera - each of the three main operas at this year's festival will broadcast on Opera Night from 7pm on Friday 17th October, Saturday 18th October and Friday 24th October, and be available to watch online via RTÉ Culture.
During the Wexford Festival Opera season last year, I was standing in the foyer of the National Opera House, which is situated right in the town centre, when a couple sidled up to me, (there was no one else around). They were visiting from the United States and in a very quiet, almost reverential way, they asked me if I could tell them exactly where the Opera House was situated. Well, I told them, 'You're here... This is it... You're standing in it right now'. They looked surprised and told me they had been visiting some of the major European houses, including those in Paris, Vienna, and La Scala Milan, but that this was different and quite unexpected!
Watch Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali live from Wexford Opera House in 2024
That in itself says a great deal about the huge appeal of Wexford and its world renowned Opera Festival, now marking its 74th season. Just like the by-now famously obscure repertoire, the present (and relatively new) National Opera House, is a somewhat 'not so closely concealed secret'. Built on the site of the former, and much loved Theatre Royal, which had housed the festival, since the early 1950s this purpose built 'state of the art' Opera House is beautifully concealed behind what - at first glance - appears to be a continuation of the town's original High Street. Upon closer inspection, it is in fact a lovingly created facade of terraced houses that belies the magnificent, public space inside, with several levels offering the most spectacular views of the Quays and the Irish sea beyond - not to mention the tactile American walnut-clad splendour of the main auditorium itself, with its pitch perfect acoustic. I told my (by now) new friends that if they were to walk to the end of High Street, or even better the Quays, and look back, they would most certainly see an Opera House!
Watch Le Maschere live from Wexford Opera House in 2024
There is that, equally intriguingly, aspect of the festival that makes it really stand out from the others: the repertoire! Often cited as breathing new life into 'some of the greatest operas never seen, or at best rarely' it is probably this particular chrematistic, along with the foundations of talent on every level that underpin this amazing event, that grants Wexford Festival Opera it's international status, and its unique creative alchemy. To put it more simply, up and until the curtain rises, you have little or no idea of what you are going to get! And therein lies its great appeal.
So many worlds brought to life each season, with the one guaranteed prerequisite that they will all be very different.
The first production I ever saw in the new house was of Nina Rota's opera from the 1970's, The Italian Straw Hat, based on a play and film from the 1920's. Up until then I really only knew of the composer through his renowned score to The Godfather trilogy, a very tempting prelude, but an opera centred around a Florentine straw hat that ends up being devoured by a bored, and overheated horse before a local wedding seemed implausible to say the least. Little did I know! In the event it was a beautiful piece, full of comic and lyrical charm, set in 1950's Italy and in true Wexford fashion, visually stunning.
How that contrasts with the Wexford realisation of La Ciociara, a two -opera by another Italian composer, Marco Tutino, based upon Vittorio De Sica's celebrated film from 1960 Two Women (for which Sophia Loren won her Oscar, the first actor to do so in a foreign language). Set in a war-torn Italy in the 1940's, it was a huge part of the 2023 season... where else would you find it?
Watch La Ciociara live from Wexford Festival Opera in 2023
William Balcom's Dinner at Eight from the 2018 lineup, based on the Broadway play and subsequent film of the same name, offered an amazing evocation of an art deco New York in the 1920's, complete with multi-dimensional Manhattan skyline, a place where the lobster wasn't the only thing that crashed!
One of my personal favourites was Risurrezione by Franco Alfano, a one-time musical amanuensis to Puccini, completing Turandot for the great man back in 1926, but also famous in his own right. In 2017 Wexford chose to recognise this by staging the most spectacular realisation of his opera, indeed the only operatic work based upon a Tolstoy novel, which is in itself hard to believe. Right from the very first strains of Alfano's masterful score, we were drawn into the semi-autobiographical world of the author, and what he described at the time as his 'youthful sins'. Passion, hurt, love, regret, and redemption, played out against a background of epic scale; vast Siberian plains, sweat shops, redemption in a cornfield at sun rise, and even a reunion on a station platform, as a train pulls in during a snow blizzard in the dead of night! I will never forget it - it felt as if something on the scale of David Lean's Dr Zhivago had landed on the stage... All the vision of Rosetta Cucchi, current Artistic Director of Wexford Festival Opera, as it is today. Only at Wexford would you find it. So many worlds brought to life each season, with the one guaranteed prerequisite that they will all be very different.
If any of this whets your appetite, then do join us on RTÉ lyric fm (and also on RTÉ Culture) for the entire opening weekend of Myths and Legends. Claim the best seat in the house, and join us on the road less travelled for three amazing operas, this year by Verdi, Handel, and Delius, and as the audience stand every night at seven-thirty for that other great Wexford tradition before the curtain rises, a rousing version of Amhrán na bhFiann... We will be there to bring you all the best of the rest, via RTE Lyric fm, from 7pm Friday and Saturday, where we will joined by listeners all over Europe as part of the EBU's Opera Series!
Opera Night from Wexford Festival Opera is on RTÉ lyric fm on the 17th, 18th and 24th of October - find out more about RTÉ lyric fm and RTÉ Culture live at Wexford Festival Opera 2025 here
