Wexford festival opera promises a magical 2022 season

“Follow the Rabbit”. So exhorts the Wexford Festival Opera programme for 2022, 21 October to 6 November, general booking now open. Good luck! I’ve already got my tickets. So, there!

“Jaysus, Leopold. It must be Bloomsday again. Pissed as usual. Now, would that be your Wexford pink rabbit, or the fluffle of blue ones that keep cavorting in me head when I’m James Joycing in the Bar Undertaker in the Bull Ring?”

“Molly Bloom, if I’ve told you once … Just go to the bluidy opera and avoid the pop-up events. You’re a disgrace to the art of incomprehensible prose fiction, so you are.”

Sadly, James Joyce died ten years before Dr Tom Walsh conceived his bonkers plan to stage an annual opera festival on Ireland’s south-easterly extremity, Wexford. I like to think he would have approved in spades. The course of the festival has been as unknowable as the plot of Joyce’s Ulysses for seventy years.

This year, Follow the Rabbit, a series of as yet unknown pop-up events, will astonish opera-goers and Wexfordians alike as they go about Grad’s daily grind in the town’s narrow streets. I’m particularly looking forward to a mezzo impromptu outburst in The Revolution launderette, conveniently located in Tesco. “Liberté, égalité, lavagement!!”

No wash-house blues in Wexford. Ireland Lookup boasts no fewer than “ten best” launderettes in the town. Begs the question, what are the others like? Pop-up rabbits will be spoilt for choice. 

It’s a sure sign that Artistic Director, Rosetta Cucchi is now firmly in the saddle, having taken over directorship of the festival during the Covid blackout. She has gone native, Infused, as were the Blooms, by the spirit of their place.

Good thing, too. Only last year I predicted Cucchi would break the 19th-century mould for the three main stage works. And she has. Sort of. Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, (don’t’cha just love his Favourite Hits Album), composed La Tempesta. (Is this a leftover from last year’s Shakespeare themed programme, ed?) Halévy was born in 1799. 

I win on a technicality. We are in the 18th century. Although Halévy couldn’t have known it at the time. He breached no 19th-century temporal scheduling rule. Celebratory cakes may have all been consumed in the 19th century. Honest, guv, I misled no one. I believe they were conceived in the 18th. 

I’m happy to submit to a full inquiry, with public disclosure, but only after Wexford’s plod have submitted their report. I pass on to Boris Johnson, 10 Downing Street, the helpful thought that his popping of champers and cutting of cake be classified as “pop-up” events, beyond his control. Man up. Offer the classic, “It wisnae me,” defence. 

Always worked for my clients in Glasgow Sheriff Court. Well, the ones that didn’t end up in Barlinnie, anyway. Sir Keir Starmer can mock this Follow the Rabbit defence all he likes, but non-Westminstery people will want to “move on”. 

And move on we shall, to La Tempesta, Lalla-Roukh, Félicien David and Armida, Antonin Dvorák this year’s three mainstage operas. That’s moving on with a vengeance. No argument of “same old”. Cucchi has been dipping in the “totally unknown” goody bag with a sense of purpose. The overarching theme is magic and music. 

There are more small-stage offerings than usual, too, many innovative. Cinderella, by the Greta-Thunberg-wunderkind of 21st-century composition, Alma Deutscher, The Master, Alberto Caruso and The Spectre Knight, Alfred Cellier.

Cinderella is Deutscher’s second opera, her first The Sweeper of Dreams. You have to be something of a prodigy to have your premiere conducted by Zubin Mehta. Deutscher is not appearing in person as Cinderella, as she did in Zurich. The role — Cinderella’s alter ego is a violinist — is being taken by Megan O’Neill. 

The Master is based on a novel by Colm Tóibin, responsible for the libretto. Tóibin saw his first opera, Les Pêcheurs de perles, in Wexford in 1971, so has roots dug deep in the festival. 

Alberto Caruso, the composer, ranges from orchestral works to film scores, incidental music and video games. Try out his Cardiofitness before retiring to the Bar Undertaker for a sharpener. Certainly not afterwards. His output is soft and melodic.

Alfred Cellier is, well… unknown. The programme says, “Even by Wexford standards, Cellier (1844-91) is a rarely heard composer”. Understatement. His one CD, an operetta, Dorothy, on the Naxos label, reveals a Gilbert and Sullivan type light melodic skill. Cellier died in 1891, so the claim on Spotify that he posted Dorothy himself, must be a Borissian moment of foresight!

The Spectre Knight features a gloomy glen, a usurped kingdom, a ghostly knight, a besotted maiden and a restoration of family fortunes. Unmissable.

These three “bonus” operas are weightier than the usual offerings on the festival fringes. Cucchi is clearly waving her experimenter’s wand. To the meat in the Wexford sandwich. Shakespeare’s The Tempest in which music is central to the play’s fabric, has inspired many operas. Mozart had one on the stocks when he died and Mendelssohn planned to beat Halévy to the punch but failed.

So, Halévy’s grand-opéra offering was premiered in London, at Her Majesty’s Theatre, in 1850. Halévy wrote 40 operas and was admired by Wagner, no less. His librettist, Eugène Scribe, was a French dramatist with a huge following and an uncanny ability to craft a plot.

Believe it or not, Lalla-Roukh has Irish genetics, in the shape of poet Thomas Moore. The proud tavern in Wexford’s Cornmarket bears his name. So, what we really need at this hour, when globalisation is being called to account, is an Irish take on the distant lands of Kashmir and Samarkand.

An opera-comique, based on the old mistaken identity trope — I loved you as a poor minstrel and never dreamt you were a prince. (Cymbal clash.) You’re now a king. We’ll all live happily ever after!

Armida is based on Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme, a mythicised account of the Crusades. I think Cucchi has uncovered a jewel, as Dvorák’s music is some of his finest work. Here we have a pagan magician pitted against a sorceress — the magic theme of this year’s Wexford. Although the opera crept into the 20th century, premiering in Prague in 1904, by then it seemed old fashioned and never found favour. 

Tasso is an opera in his own right. Dominating 16th-century European literature, he was bipolar. Which explains his outspokenness and constant overtures to the latest lady at court who tickled his fancy.

Persecuted by the Medici, who wanted credit for his Gerusalemme, he fought a duel with a Ferrarese gentleman, Maddalo, stabbed a servant in the presence of the duchess of Urbino, then feigned madness to cover the honour of Leonora d’Este, with whom he had an illicit liaison.

He spent seven years in the madhouse of St. Anna, then was rescued by Vincenzo Gonzaga, Prince of Mantua. Finally, in a last hopeful gasp, Pope Clement VIII honoured him, as Petrarch had been crowned, with laurels, on the Capitol. Here’s hoping Dvorák’s opera is half as interesting. 

Other bonnes bouchées at this year’s festival, are The Selenites, a new commission from Conor Mitchell, the northern Irish composer of MASS — an incantation of standardised prayers; a host of fourteen lunchtime recitals, a Daniela Barcellona — Italian mezzo — Gala; a full Gala Concert; an appearance by pianist Barry Douglas; and the traditional Tom Walsh lecture, in honour of the fabled founder GP.

Last year we stuttered into social distancing post-Covid life support. This year, Wexford is back! And another thing!

Sir Harrison Birtwistle has died, aged 88. Lauded as England’s musical Uncle Grumpy and most distinctive contemporary composer, I acknowledge many thought his work ground-breaking. Let not hypocrisy break out in the sadness of his death. His best-known opera, The Mask of Orpheus performed by English National Opera (ENO) in 2019, reviewed in Reaction, was complicated intellectual gibberish. It is one of the 20th century’s most inaccessible works. 

And on those grounds of inaccessibility alone, Sir Harrison’s contribution to the British musical scene should be supped with a long spoon. He wrote music for insiders. Or, for gullible cognoscenti to nod to. Aspirant insiders. 

The Arts Council’s persistence in forcing grant recipients — like ENO — to stage these “cutting edge” works perhaps explains row upon row of empty seats and gives succour to those who claim opera is “exclusive”.

Here is Sir Harrison in his own words: “I don’t create linear music, I move in circles, more precisely, I move in concentric circles. The events I create move as the planets move in the solar system. They rotate at various speeds. Some move through bigger orbits than others and take longer to return”.

I couldn’t have put it better myself.