2016 Season Brochure 65th 26 October – Wexfordopera.com Festival 6 November 2016 BOOK ONLINE AT WEXFORDOPERA.COM | 1 PHOTO: SEAN O’ RIORDAN ‘A world-class opera festival specializing in obscure rarities based in a tiny coastal town – Wexford is the ultimate Irish joke. The punchline? It’s bloody brilliant.’ THE SPECTATOR, ALEXANDRA COGHLAN ‘The Irish alchemy that has drawn collectors of recherché opera year after year to the southeast corner of the Emerald Isle once again worked its magic at the 64th Wexford Festival.’ THE SUNDAY TIMES, HUGH CANNING ‘The Wexford Festival Opera, held for 12 days every October/November, is one of Europe’s key international music events.’ WALL STREET JOURNAL, BRIAN KELLOW PHOTO: SEAN O’ RIORDAN WEXFORD AND ITS OPERA FESTIVAL In October each year, Wexford, a town on the south-east In 2008 a new Opera House was built on the site of the coast of Ireland, is transformed by opera when great old Theatre Royal. In 2014 the Wexford Opera House performers, local volunteers and visitors from many was renamed Ireland’s National Opera House. The highly countries come together in a shared enterprise. Since 1951, praised Orchestra of Wexford Festival Opera is largely the Festival has specialised in selecting operas that have constituted of Irish-born and Irish-resident musicians, and fallen out of favour or have almost never been staged. each season young professional opera singers are engaged Over the years, many young singers on the threshold of to form the Chorus of Wexford Festival Opera. international careers – Nicola Monti, Graziella Sciutti, Wexford’s opera productions have received many awards Sergei Leiferkus, Joseph Calleja, Mirella Freni, Elizabeth and are regularly nominated in various categories in the Connell, Janet Baker, Ann Murray, Angela Meade, Bryan International Opera Awards and in the Irish Times Irish Hymel, amongst many others, have all sung at Wexford. Theatre Awards. Exciting productions by internationally Leading music critics, particularly from Britain, wrote renowned directors and designers not only bring life to enthusiastically about the operatic rarities that were operas that may have lain on dusty shelves in archives for a performed at Wexford. They praised the singers, the century or more, but also enable the lives of characters in directors and their imaginative productions, and they were an opera to connect with our own. charmed by the town and its people. BOOK ONLINE AT WEXFORDOPERA.COM | 1 FUNDERS AND SPONSORS Principal Funder Grant Funders Corporate Leaders Corporate Sponsors Official IT & Communications Partner Official Festival Car Community & Education Partners Accommodation Partners Preferred Hotel Partner Hospitality and Media Partners 2 | WEXFORD FESTIVAL OPERA 2016 ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S WELCOME PHOTO BY 21STOPS.COM BY PHOTO Greetings. If you have never attended a performance in Ireland’s In the National Opera House this year, we will be National Opera House, please consider this brochure to presenting three operatic rarities of unique dramatic be your invitation to the 2016 Wexford Festival Opera. If interest. Herculanum by Félicien David: A story of you are a Festival regular, I hope you will be excited by forbidden love between Pagan royalty and Christian slaves, what is on offer in the 2016 Festival season. Every October culminating in the destructive eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Wexford comes alive with musicians and creative artists Vanessa by Samuel Barber: Not wanting to acknowledge from many countries. Wexford is rich in creativity: in music the many years that have passed since her former lover’s performance and composition, theatrical production, art departure, Vanessa waits with tense anticipation for his and literature. All these life-enhancing gifts come together return. But the man that appears is not who she thinks. in opera. Maria de Rudenz by Gaetano Donizetti: Not even after her own apparent murder can a wife seeking revenge Created by Dr Tom Walsh with the people of Wexford be stopped. Her unfaithful and absent husband and his in 1951, the Festival retains a deep connection with the new intended bride will be her victims. You will find the community. It attracts internationally renowned singers, many other unique events on offer at this year’s Festival as well as some of the best young vocalists destined to described within these pages. wonderful careers, conductors, directors and designers. In Wexford we explore less-frequented areas of the Experience the magical setting and atmosphere of operatic repertory, so our focus is on reviving and Wexford, unique in Ireland, during our Festival. You’ll be rehabilitating operas that have not received the exposure most welcome. they richly deserve. Many of Wexford’s re-discoveries have David Agler, Artistic Director gone on to become part of the standard opera repertory. BOOK ONLINE AT WEXFORDOPERA.COM | 3 OPERA HERCULANUM FÉLICIEN DAVID (1810–1876) OPERA IN 4 ACTS | LIBRETTO BY JOSEPH MÉRY & TÉRENCE HADOT SUNG IN FRENCH FIRST PERFORMED IN PARIS AT THE THÉÂTRE IMPÉRIAL DE L’OPÉRA, 4 MARCH 1859 DAVID AGLER CONDUCTOR STEPHEN MEDCALF DIRECTOR JAMIE VARTAN SET & COSTUME DESIGNER CHRISTOPHER AKERLAND LIGHTING DESIGNER Mount Vesuvius is a silent but powerful presence in revolt. As the ominous rumblings of Mount in one of the most famous of all operas, Mozart’s Vesuvius grow, the Christians console themselves Così fan tutte, whose Neapolitan setting with the prospect of eternal life (‘C’est le ciel! finds its characters sitting on something of an C’est la vie!’). emotional volcano. Dating 70 years after Mozart’s The music of David has sometimes been masterpiece, Félicien David’s until recently compared with that of Berlioz, who himself forgotten Herculanum puts the peak and indeed welcomed Herculanum warmly in a review. its calamitous eruption centre-stage: the original Though that comparison is stretching things a production at the Paris Opéra in 1859 featured little, it does perhaps give an idea of what Berlioz a stunning visual climax with the destruction would have sounded like if he had wandered off of the entire set. The plot is set in ad 79 in the along Orientalist tracks. Having studied at the eponymous ancient city neighbouring Pompeii, Paris Conservatoire with Cherubini, David visited where the pagan queen Olympia finds herself the Middle East and remains best remembered attracted to the Christian slave Hélios, and thus today as the composer of the ‘ode symphonique’ ignores the advice of her brother Nicanor to put Le Désert. Several of his operas reflect this the slave to death. Nicanor himself attempts to interest too, notably Lalla-Roukh, Eden and seduce the slave Lilia but is struck dead when he Moïse au Sinaï, though other works (Christophe tells her that her God does not exist. Soon Satan Colomb and La Perle du Brésil) suggest the equal appears and begins to play havoc with everyone’s draw of the New World. Almost Meyerbeerian in lives, forcing Hélios to choose between marrying dramatic ambition if not in duration, Herculanum Olympia and leaving Lilia to die. He opts for a was to remain the composer’s only grand opéra. pagan marriage, and before long the slaves are O’REILLY THEATRE | NATIONAL OPERA HOUSE TICKETS ¤25 – ¤145 26 OCTOBER – 8 P.M. 29 OCTOBER – 8 P.M. 1 NOVEMBER – 8 P.M. 4 NOVEMBER – 8 P.M. 4 | WEXFORD FESTIVAL OPERA 2016 BOOK ONLINE AT WEXFORDOPERA.COM | 5 OPERA VANESSA SAMUEL BARBER (1910–1981) OPERA IN 3 ACTS | LIBRETTO BY GIAN CARLO MENOTTI SUNG IN ENGLISH FIRST PERFORMED IN NEW YORK AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA, 15 JANUARY 1958 TIMOTHY MYERS CONDUCTOR JAMES ROBINSON DIRECTOR ALLEN MOYER SET DESIGNER JAMES SCHUETTE COSTUME DESIGNER CHRISTOPHER AKERLAND LIGHTING DESIGNER Though not totally neglected, Barber’s first opera the lover is dead. Nevertheless, Vanessa and the deserves to be much better known than it is. There younger Anatol are drawn to each other, leaving are few operas of the last half-century that have Erika – seduced by Anatol on his first night at the such obvious audience- and singer-appeal, for house – pregnant and suicidal. When Vanessa and Barber was a great composer for the voice; think of Anatol depart for Paris, Erika settles down to wait his songs, or of Knoxville: Summer of 1915, that and, as her aunt had done before, gives orders for quintessential American masterpiece. Such sound the house to be closed up. operatic models as Puccini, Strauss and Berg may Vanessa received a glamorous premiere at New inform the work, but the language is recognisably York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1958, directed by Barber’s own and the orchestral writing is richly Menotti, designed by Cecil Beaton and conducted atmospheric. by Dmitri Mitropoulos. The cast featured Eleanor That atmosphere is Ibsenesque since the action Steber, Rosalind Elias, Regina Resnik and Nicolai is set in an unspecified northern country, around Gedda. (Callas had turned down the title role 1905. The libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, because no one could expect her to fall for a man Barber’s partner and, of course, a successful opera who had slept with a mezzo-soprano.) Six years composer in his own right, tells of how Vanessa, later Barber tightened the opera, reducing it from her mother (the Old Baroness) and niece (Erika) four to three acts by running the original first two have waited 20 years for the return of Vanessa’s acts together and cutting a coloratura aria for lover, Anatol. Upon his arrival, it is discovered that Vanessa herself. It is this more compact, two-hour he is the man’s son, also named Anatol, and that version that we will see at Wexford. A Wexford Festival production in association with the Santa Fe Opera O’REILLY THEATRE | NATIONAL OPERA HOUSE TICKETS ¤25 – ¤145 27 OCTOBER – 8 P.M.