Wexford Festival Opera is back – with a Shakespearean twist

They finally did it. This year, Wexford Festival Opera happened. Live. On a wing and a prayer, defying the Covid challenge of 200 distancing empty seats, audiences accepting their role as “maschere galanti”.

Fired by the sheer unquenchable vim of Rosseta Cucchi, the festival’s almost-new Artistic Director, this most unusual opera company, from the most unlikely location on planet earth, pulled off the seemingly impossible. 

Wexford, a sleepy southern Irish market town nestling at the mouth of the River Slaney as it opens to meet the Atlantic, is no stranger to the unusual. 

In the dying days of the First World War, it served as a base for “Large Americas”, US Curtiss flying boats, and the Felixstowe, the Curtiss’ revised UK built counterpart. 

But the town never really got a chance to biff Kaiser Bill’s prowling Atlantic submarines. The war ended. Wexford slept. Then, in 1951, local GP Dr Tom Walsh dreamt a dream. Based on local choir-based talent, why not start an opera festival? Wexford woke.

For a couple of weeks, every year since the town has never been the same again. This was the 70th Anniversary of Dr Walsh’s dream. Cucchi turned to a Shakespearean theme to celebrate. And – very Wexford-like – the programme featured three operas with only a whiff of Shakespeare in their nostrils. Little ado about the bard. 

Except, the Swan of Avon had a starring role in one of them. Will Shakespeare as “himself”, along with Queen Elizabeth I and Falstaff. That would be in Le Songe d’une Nuit d’Été from the pen of Ambroise Thomas, a bonkers take on the bard’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Falstaff was a bit late to the party; 200 years late. Either he had been rewritten from the reign of Henry IV, or he was the longest-lived morbidly obese knight in the realm. No one cared a whit. 

Le Songe d’une Nuit d’Été – Ambroise Thomas 1811- 1896

The opera is about Shakespeare’s importance in literature. What? A French composer pedestaling Shakespeare? Provocatively, Ambroise Thomas premiered his opera in Paris, poking fun at his fellow countrymen, lecturing the fuddy-duddy doyens of the Académie Française on the supremacy of English literature.

If he had been a scallop fisherman, Thomas would have been detained by the French authorities and sunk without trace. The odd thing is that in its day Le Songe d’une Nuit d’Été hit a raw nerve. The argument went like this. “Look, our old diesel plays don’t hack it anymore. It’s hardly surprising the rosbifs’ Shakespeare and the Yanks have banded together and gone nuclear instead”. 

Not exactly the words of Victor Hugo, who admired Thomas. But not far off the mark. 

The great author opined frequently and regretfully about the stultified nature of contemporary 19th century French literature, in much the same way as the recent AUKUS Treaty reflects on the state of French submarine technology. Hugo feared French literature was becoming a torpid backwater.

The plot is that William Shakespeare has lost his mojo. For the sake of the world – and even France – he has to get it back. The monarch fears for the state of a Shakespeare-free England. Queen Bess, Olivia and Lord Latimer conspire to remotivate him. The Queen and Olivia turn up in disguise, flirt with him and, with Falstaff’s help, set him back on his feet. 

Thomas was also having a sly go at the strict rules of the Opéra Comique laid down by Napoleon, which dictated in opera the good were rewarded, the bad punished, and there must be dancing. None of that happens here.

The score is musically engaging, full of interest and variety. At its Paris debut in 1850, the work proved a huge success, performed over 100 times in the following five years. Towards the end of the century, Thomas became unfashionable, overtaken by Puccini and Verdi. The Wexford revival is a reminder of Thomas’ worth.

Deployment of the chorus was particularly deft. It was positioned in the side aisle seats of the auditorium, providing immersive surround sound and, more significantly for the action, not getting in the way and overcrowding the stage. A neat trick from Andrew Synnott, Chorus Master, whose own opera, La Cucina, was performed from within a mighty blue, tiered wedding cake at Wexford in 2019.

I Capuleti e i Montecchi – Vincenzo Bellini 1801 – 1835

Not Romeo and Juliet as written by Shakespeare, but a version of the ancient tale of family animosity with roots in Greek literature provided by librettist Felice Romani, who had written a Romeo e Giulietta for composer Nicola Vaccaj. Rip-off time. Thomas was asked to provide work for the opening of the Venice 1830 Carnival season. He and Romani knocked out their opera in six weeks. It was a roaring success.

During lockdown, the production was devised as part of the Wexford Workshop Initiative, which screened a series of scaled-down live performances online when the O’Reilly National Theatre was closed.

 It was a brave decision of Conran Hanratty, the director, and Giuseppe Montesano, the conductor to stick to the de minimis version for the festival.

The music was provided by only a piano, played bravura by Giulio Zappa, and a quartet of two violins, a viola and a cello – The Con Tempo Quartet. The effect was electrifying, as Bellini’s luscious bel canto music was articulated principally by the singers, often ensemble and a cappella. Heresy!

 In some ways, this was more satisfying than a full orchestral accompaniment. The setting was modern – suits, knives instead of swords, but, thankfully, no guns. The temptation to mimic Godfather interfamily slaughter was resisted. Corpses remained offstage, in the imagination. 

Edmea – Alfred Catalani 1854 – 1893

This was the star turn of the festival. An unknown Catalani gem, dugout, polished, masterfully set and shown off as bling spectacle. Solo voices soared, choruses blasted, Catalani’s lustrous orchestration – which had captivated a 20-year-old Toscanini who conducted it in Turin – transported the audience to the nymph world of Edmea, and we all had a bloody good time. 

That is, until the self-sacrificing hero servant Ulmo, in love with Edmea and forcibly married to her by the mean Count who didn’t want her marrying his son, Oberto, committed suicide in the last moments, just as dad rushed to the rescue with an annulment. 

Shakespeare? Well, it was another instance where the good died young, so a tenuous connection. Who cares? This was a magnificent production created by Julia Burbach, Director and Cécile Trémolières, Set and Costume Designer. 

She presented two-layered worlds. The one in which Edmea lived, and the spirit world of the river where she lost her memory after jumping in to escape. The scene was split horizontally. Real-world above, inverted image spirit world below, with the entire set – tables, chairs, even a red telephone – of the real world looking like mountains mirrored in a still loch. The effect of creating another dimension was very real. 

The ethereal green lighting topped off the illusion of an alternative reality. We were seeing into Edmea’s mind. The set reminded me of John Everett Millais’ painting of the dead Ophelia, floating, hands outstretched, in a placid bower like stream. Aha! A Shakespeare connection after all.

Catalani is best known for La Wally, which I saw at Wexford in 1985. He died at the age of 39, his technique undeveloped. He was snobbily seen as too old-fashioned, not Italian enough – this was the coming age of Verdi – and generally too Nordic. 

I think for this era none of that matters. Wexford has given a production of his Edmea which should be snapped up by enterprising producers in opera houses everywhere looking to stage something different, but which will still rank as a crowd-pleaser. 

The Wexford town atmosphere was less bustling than pre-Covid. The Galley, an ancient riverboat that had ploughed up and down the River Barrow since time immemorial from nearby New Ross, fueling operagoers with shellfish and Guinness for the evening ordeal ahead, sadly remains sunk at its moorings. The cosy Lobster Pot restaurant at nearby Ballyfane, boasting the best crab claws ever is changing hands. The Bar Undertaker in Main Street – now, there’s a Falstaffian enterprise – is still its eclectic self. 

Local photographer Pádraig Grant, who runs a fascinating gallery off the High Street, has produced a limited edition of 70 handsome coffee table books, Retroscena 70, chronicling the Wexford Factory’s behind the scenes activities during lock-down. The book is an intimate record of how artists coped in extremis.

I persuaded him to sell me no. 49, which he claimed he was keeping as a Christmas present for his mother. I suspect the whole run had been destined for Mrs Grant’s stocking until some gullible opera-goer like me came ringing on his bell.

Grant is a serious travel photographer. His studio boasts touching scenes of famine ravaged children in the Horn of Africa. I asked him why he had spurned a more international career, chosen to remain in Wexford. “It was the opera in this town that made me,” was his rather surprising reply. 

After Edmea, which closed the festival, I spotted the author Karina Daly in the departing crowd. As the proud possessor of a signed copy of her latest book, The History of Wexford Festival Opera 1951 – 2021 (no prizes for originality there) – I wanted to know what had first caught her historian’s eye

“I came across Wexford when I was doing my PhD and was intrigued by the impact opera had on the community. Frankly, I was dragged in”. 

The book is an excellent almanac, chock full of local colour. I was particularly pleased to read the chapter telling the story of the Wexford connection with Scottish Opera, a relationship that served both companies well. 

And that’s Wexford Festival Opera in a nutshell. It gives many of the town’s citizens who might have pursued their dreams further afield a sound reason to stay at home. There is a gravitational force that sucks in up-and-coming PhD students. And camp followers, like me, stream in from near and far.

We make our pilgrimages to the Wexford well for annual refreshment. This was the first “live” year with Rosetta Cucchi in charge. She delivered. Yet again, light was shone into the corners of the neglected repertoire. In the case of Edmea, a masterpiece. 

Now that she has hit her stride, I predict that next year, Cucchi will extend her horizon beyond 19th century works. The countdown to Wexford Festival Opera 2022 has begun.