Curtains up for Wexford Opera’s 70th anniversary

Serenbloodydippitydoodah! Wexford 2021 has been confirmed. It’s time for some post-Covid normality in the Irish seaside town (albeit with a bit of social distancing thrown in). 

Forget Boris’ “hugging with caution” from the 17th of May. Where would his risqué reputation stand if he had hugged everyone he met “with caution”? Will Boris avoid hugging his nearest and dearest on the 16th? Is Carrie Symonds planning to leave the country on the 17th? What is the Cabinet meeting protocol on hugging? Restraint is hardly Boris’ strong suit, and second-tier handshaking is for wimps. Even in his most blubbing moments, Boris’ idol, Winston Churchill, never stopped telling us to hug anyone. He couldn’t even bring himself to carve a Sunday goose that roamed the Chartwell grounds. 

As I was listening to BBC Radio 3 – avoiding the strangest Prime Ministerial press debacle in living memory – the show’s venerable presenter, Donald Macleod, broke into his Composer of the Week script to tell us the Wexford 2021 Festival had been confirmed for the October 19th – 31st. But, don’t book yet, not until I’ve bagged my tickets first. 

This year, the festival – celebrating its 70th anniversary – follows the Shakespearean theme initially intended for 2020. The incoming Italian Artistic Director Rosetta Cucchi firmly believes that Shakespeare’s themes of love, madness, and comedy are operatic – it’s an excellent excuse for a theme.

Hang on a minute. One of the productions, Edmea, by Alfredo Catalani, has got nothing to do with Shakespeare. The other two products do… a bit.  Ein Wintermärchen, composer Karl Goldmark, and Le Songe d’une nuit éte, composer Amboise Thomas. No need for translations; you can work them out. 

Ms Cucchi is unapologetic about playing fast and loose with the Bard. “Well, Edmea is LIKE Shakespeare”. Fair enough. Anyone expecting to see Oberon and Titania in Le songe d’une nuit éte will be disappointed. The Amboise opera has nothing to do with Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Instead, it is a romp featuring Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I. 

Joseph-Bernard Rosier and Adolphe de Leuven, the librettists, portray the playwright-poet sinking gradually into drunkenness and debauchery – (perhaps lockdown syndrome) – until Elizabeth bucks him up. He’s England’s literary genius (“Il faut respecter le genie qui pour toi descendit du ciel”) – how did Macron muscle in on the action?

Then, the plot heads towards truly bizzaro territory. The third leading character is Sir John Falstaff, governor of “Richemont”, where the action is set. Oh, come on! He’s only a couple of centuries out of period. Lord Latimer courts the lady-in-waiting, Olivia (wrong play), but nearly loses him when Shakespeare accidentally embraces her and then has to fight the young peer – this is Shakespeare on crack. 

Surprise, surprise, Le Songe is an opera comique. There is always one comic card in the Wexford pack. Amboise and his librettists are good at this genre. He was highly popular at Paris’ Opera-Comique in the mid-1800s. Another of his operas, La Coeur Célimène, was successfully revived at Wexford in 2011. 

Walter Le Moli, stage director, has a track record in Shakespeare theatre – Aha!, at last, a spooky Shakespeare connection at a distance – and has staged Verdi’s Don Carlo at Naples’ Teatro San Carlo; Janacek’s Jenufa with Vladimir Jurowski; Mozart’s Così fan tutte; Puccini’s Il trittico with Gianandrea Noseda at the Mariinsky Theatre; Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunnaire at Parma’s Teatro Due; and Peter Weiss’s Marat-Sade, which was performed by Fabio Biondi and his orchestra, Europa Galante, in Rome, Parma and Turin. Phew! Quite a CV. He has comprehensive experience of genres ranging from tragedy to comedy and is a catch for Wexford.

I did my Googling, and Edmea has nothing to do with Shakespeare at all. Readers who know of a connection, please advise. The libretto is a bit of a mongrel—actually, proper Wexfordian bonkers, with a complex, distinguished pedigree to boot.

Opera dog regularly eats opera dog. In 1853 Verdi’s La Traviata, based on The lady of the camelias by Alexandre Dumas fils, proved an artistic and commercial triumph. Catalani dug up another Dumas-based work, Les Danicheff, then had the brass neck to approach Verdi’s librettist, Arrigo Boito, asking him to turn it into an opera. Boito told him to push off. Undeterred, Catalani turned to Antonio Ghislanzoni, librettist of Verdi’s also wildly successful Aida.

Ghislanzoni had an offhand, “Here’s one I prepared earlier” moment, pulling off the shelf a libretto written for someone else and discarded – based on something completely different. There’s artistic integrity for you. Blowing off the dust, the pair squeezed the Les Danicheff plot into the libretto of Edmea. It’s a highly original plot about a young woman, mad with love, forced to marry against her will. Well, I never heard that one before. There is a mad scene and a happy ending. Sorry, I was meant to give you a *spoiler alert.*

In the hands of the director, Julia Burbach, I think Edmea will turn out to be this year’s Wexford Surprise. Ms Burbach has great skill in opera alchemy. She is Staff Director at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where she was responsible for the revival of the Richard Jones La Bohème, eliminating many of the original 2017 production’s disappointing glitches. She ranges far and wide, including delivering highly successful work for the niche Grimeborne (yes, that IS a cynical riff on Glyndebourne) opera company, which stages cutting-edge productions in London’s east end.  

Oh, yes, that Shakespeare guy. Remember him? Karl Goldmark’s Ein Wintermärchen – A Winter’s Tale – lands, at last, firmly on the festival’s theme. Premiered at the Hofoper in Vienna in 1908, Ein Wintermärchen was the last of six operas composed by Goldmark (1830–1915). His first opera is his most famous, Die Köningen von Saba (The Queen of Sheba). 

Goldmark’s greatest strength is as a magician of orchestration. Contemporary critics raved about the “burning scarlet gleam” and “sensuous iridescence” of his music – must be good then. But, what the hell do they mean? Other than proving it’s almost impossible to describe music in words. The librettist of Ein Wintermärchen is Alfred Maria Willner, one of the most prolific Viennese wordsmiths of the day, producing over fifty libretti, including several for Franz Lehár.

Dmitry Bertman has been chosen to direct. The Russian theatre and opera director is the founder of Helikon Opera, Moscow, based in the 250 seat Mayakovsky Theatre, formerly the ballroom in the palace of the Shakhoskoi-Glebov-Streshneva family – great 19th-century art patrons. He is a master of cutting-edge production.

If the remainder of the proposed 2020 programme survives, there will be other Shakespearean flavoured delights on offer away from the main stage. Shakespeare in Love: a collage of the most famous love scenes, arias, duets and quartets from operas related to Shakespeare. The Dark Side of Shakespeare: another collage, this time of the darker, more obscure and mysterious Shakespearean characters in opera, from Otello to Macbeth. 

Then there is Shakespeare and Falstaff in Conversation. Set in O’Flaherty’s Bar/Undertaker Saloon, it’s a pop-up event that will thrill with spontaneity, intellectual perspicacity and heroic Guinness consumption. I am currently working on the libretto. At the end, they all hug. Watch this space. I’m thinking of a crowd-funding campaign. 

Wexford Festival Opera, plying its eccentric wares since 1951, thrives on innovation. To its illogical revivals, it always brings a novel approach, breathing life into neglected works. Pulling off that trick year on year takes cunning. I think Ms Cucchi’s bold, postponed, first festival should more accurately be themed Three Directors of Wexford. Walter Le Moli, Julia Burbach and Dmitry Bertman are smart choices for an opera company that self-identifies as a Hidden Gem. They have been recruited to the festival’s colours for a purpose. 

Aided by Rosetta Cucchi’s fresh eye, I bet the trio will burnish the lunatic element that makes Wexford such a standout in the opera calendar. Wexford Festival Opera’s 70th anniversary is set to be a stunner.