64Th Festival 21 October – 1 November 2015 Wexfordopera.Com
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21 October – 64th Wexfordopera.com 1 November Festival 2015 ‘Leading the way with a piece that deserves to be seen widely in Europe’ Sunday Telegraph Silent Night, 2014, Kevin Puts. Photo © Clive Barda/ArenaPAL ‘Winningly sung, it’s a ‘Mariotte’s operatic work that should be version of Oscar Wilde’s neglected no longer’ tale is given a successful makeover at the Wexford The Times Festival’ The Telegraph Don Bucefalo, 2014, Antonio Cagnoni. Photo © Clive Barda/ArenaPAL Salomé, 2014, Antoine Mariotte. Photo © Clive Barda/ArenaPAL Wexford and its Opera Festival In October each year, Wexford, a town on the south- east coast of Ireland, is transformed by opera when great performers, local volunteers and visitors from many countries come together in a shared enterprise. Photo © Ger Lawlor The idea of producing an opera in the old Theatre Royal in Wexford had sprung into being early in 1951, sang at Wexford. Leading music critics, particularly from led by Dr Tom Walsh, a Wexford doctor, a few months Britain, wrote enthusiastically about the operatic rarities after Sir Compton Mackenzie, the Scottish novelist and that were performed at Wexford. They praised the founder of Gramophone magazine, had given a talk to singers, the directors and their imaginative productions, the newly formed Wexford Opera Study Circle. Inspired and they were charmed by the town and its people. by a programme for the Aldeburgh Festival, Dr Tom thought that if a festival could be held in a small town Developments in recent years include the creation of on the Suffolk coast, it might be possible for Wexford a professional orchestra and chorus and a new Opera to transform its own forthcoming opera production House, which was built on the site of the old Theatre into a festival. Most people in the town thought it could Royal. The highly praised Orchestra of Wexford Festival not succeed but Dr Tom went ahead and, assisted by Opera is largely constituted of Irish-born and Irish- friends who shared his vision, and cajoling others who resident musicians, and each season young professional didn’t, Wexford’s Festival of Music and the Arts began opera singers are engaged to form the Chorus of on 21 October 1951 and featured four performances of Wexford Festival Opera. The Rose of Castile by Michael Balfe, who had once lived in Wexford. Wexford’s opera productions have received many awards and are regularly nominated in various The Festival rapidly consolidated its niche position by categories in the International Opera Awards and in the selecting operas that had fallen out of favour and were Irish Times Theatre Awards. Exciting productions by almost never staged, and by booking exciting young internationally renowned directors and designers not singers on the threshold of international careers – Nicola only bring life to operas that may have lain on dusty Monti, Graziella Sciutti, Sergei Leiferkus, Joseph Calleja, shelves in archives for a century or more, but also Mirella Freni, Elizabeth Connell, Janet Baker, Ann Murray, enable the lives of characters in an opera to connect Angela Meade, Bryan Hymel, amongst many others, all with our own lives. Photo © Wexford Festival Opera Photo © Ger Lawlor Photo by Patrick Browne BOOK ONLINE AT WEXFORDOPERA.COM | 1 Funders and Sponsors Principal Funder Grant Funders Principal Production Sponsor THE DELIUS TRUST Corporate Leaders Corporate Sponsors Official IT & Communications Partner Community & Education Partners Accommodation Partners Preferred Hotel Partner Hospitality and Media Partners 2 | WEXFORD FESTIVAL OPERA 2015 Artistic Director’s Welcome Greetings. If you have never attended a performance in Ireland’s National Opera House, may this Brochure be your invitation. If you are a Festival regular, have a good look at what is on offer in the 2015 Festival season. Every October Wexford comes alive with musicians and creative artists from many countries. Wexford is rich in creativity: in music performance and composition, theatrical production, art and literature. All these life- enhancing gifts come together in opera. The Festival was created by Dr Tom Walsh with the people of Wexford in 1951 and retains a deep connection with the community. It now attracts internationally renowned singers, conductors, directors and designers. In Wexford we explore less-frequented areas of the operatic repertory, so our focus is on reviving and rehabilitating operas that have fallen out of favour. Many of Wexford’s re-discoveries have become part of the popular repertory. The Wexford writer Colm Tóibín, described his life- changing experience of opera in Wexford as a boy: ‘Opera offered me a relationship to soaring beauty, to the idea that there was a world beyond the visible world’. You too can be touched by the emotions in an opera, which music and staging transform into a heart-opening and heartfelt experience, as they did for Colm, who discovered that ‘opera paved the way for a life open to possibility’. Our revivals in the National Opera House this year are Koanga by Delius, a powerful drama of a man’s renunciation of his beliefs; Guglielmo Ratcliff by Mascagni, a Gothic melodrama of a tormented man unable to accept rejection in love, and Le Pré aux clercs by Hérold, a story of love triumphing over obstacles in seventeenth-century France. The other events in this year’s Festival are described within these pages. With a setting and atmosphere unique in Ireland, Wexford enthusiastically anticipates your participation. Be part of the occasion. David Agler, Artistic Director Photo by 21stops.com BOOK ONLINE AT WEXFORDOPERA.COM | 3 Koanga FREDERICK DELIUS (1862–1934) Koanga was Delius’s third completed opera, composed Lyric drama in a prologue, three acts and an epilogue in 1895–7, about ten years before A Village Romeo and Juliet (Wexford, 2012). Delius framed the original story Libretto by Frederick Delius and Charles F Keary (The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life by George W. Cable) with a prologue and epilogue in which the after the novel The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole plantation owner’s daughters ask an old slave, Uncle Joe, Life by George W Cable to tell them the story of Koanga and Palmyra. First performance (in German translation by Koanga, a Voodoo priest and Dahomean prince, has Jelka Delius) in the Stadttheater, Elberfeld, Germany been brought to the Louisiana plantation where he meets on 30 March 1904 Palmyra, a mulatto, also of Dahomean ancestry. Koanga promises to be an obedient slave if he can marry Palmyra, Sung in English and when this is granted he renounces the beliefs of his people. He and Palmyra love each other, but their Stephen Barlow | Conductor marriage is stopped because the overseer wants to marry Michael Gieleta | Director her himself and enlists the support of Palmyra’s half- sister, the plantation owner’s wife. Palmyra is abducted James Macnamara | Set Designer and Koanga repents of his betrayal of his heritage, calling Sarah Roberts | Costume Designer on his Voodoo gods to curse the plantation. The story of Koanga and Palmyra ends violently, and in the epilogue the girls reflect on Uncle Joe’s tale. 4 | WEXFORD FESTIVAL OPERA 2015 SPONSORED BY THE DELIUS TRUST This story appealed to Delius and it probably recalled O’Reilly Theatre | National Opera House memories of his time spent in Florida in 1884 on an Tickets ¤25 – ¤145 orange plantation. His glowing, colourful music creates the opera’s powerful characterisations and atmospheric OCTOBER setting. In Koanga he used melodies and improvised WED SAT TUE FRI harmonies he had heard sung by the black workers in Florida, and the authenticity of his collected material led to Koanga being recognised as the first opera in 21|24|27|30 the European tradition to have much of its melodic material based on African-American music. Delius’s 8 p.m. 8 p.m. 8 p.m. 8 p.m. lyricism and admired orchestration complement the poignancy and exoticism of the story. Although the opera was premiered in Germany in 1904, excerpts had 21 OCTOBER PERFORMANCE SPONSOR been performed in London in 1899. Delius’s champion, Sir Thomas Beecham, conducted Koanga in England in 1935. The orchestral interlude La Calinda has remained popular in the concert hall. BOOK ONLINE AT WEXFORDOPERA.COM | 5 Guglielmo 6 | WEXFORD FESTIVAL OPERA 2015 PIETRO MASCAGNI (1863–1945) Tragedia in four acts Libretto based on Andrea Maffei’s Italian translation of the play Wilhelm Ratcliff by Heinrich Heine First performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan on Ratcliff 16 February 1895 Sung in Italian Francesco Cilluffo | Conductor Fabio Ceresa | Director Tiziano Santi | Set Designer Giuseppe Palella | Costume Designer Heine wrote his play Wilhelm Ratcliff in only three days and Mascagni too was captivated by the young Scottish romantic anti-hero outsider. He began composing his opera Guglielmo Ratcliff (translated into Italian) in 1882 whilst a student in Milan but laid it aside in order to compose Cavalleria rusticana for a competition. He won the competition with Cavalleria rusticana, triumphing over seventy-two other entries, and it made his name as a composer. The Gothic plot and stylistic and melodic mannerisms of Guglielmo Ratcliff, reminiscent of Verdi and Ponchielli, were thought old-fashioned, and it was only moderately successful when first performed in 1895. In addition, the role of Guglielmo Ratcliff has the reputation of being one of the most demanding ever written for a tenor. Cavalleria rusticana is clearly anticipated in the music, particularly in the atmospheric orchestral writing, full-blooded melodies and dramatic pace. The opera is set in northern Scotland and concerns the tragic consequences of broken relationships in two generations. Maria MacGregor has rejected Guglielmo Ratcliff as a husband but he is determined that no-one else shall marry her and challenges other suitors to duels, killing two of them.