By james art The Wexford Festival eschewed tragedy, the usual mode of grand opera, and chose three comic operas as the main productions of the 73rd annual festival. “Theatre within the theater” was the theme of this year’s festival.
Charles Villiers Stanford’s 100th anniversary has sparked renewed focus on the work of the Dublin-born composer. The Critic, one of Stanford’s nine operas written in 1915, opened the second night of the festival. Stanford reworked Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s satire, written a century earlier, as an operatic piece.
A trio of actors, Mark Lambert, Jonathan White and Arthur Riordan, get the best lines and most of the laughs, and I’ve rarely heard a Wexford audience laugh so heartily. Critic Mr. Sneer is invited to a rehearsal of the extravagant Mr. Puff and pompous Mr. Dangle’s new play, The Spanish Armada.
Conor Hanratty’s production has a Gilbert & Sullivan world feel, a feature enhanced by John Comiskey’s picture book sets. There was great singing in all the major and minor roles and the cast carried it off to good effect. There was a Monthy Pythonesque interlude when local singer Tony Brennan took to the stage in the silent role of Lord Burleigh, accompanied in the pit by an extended viola solo performed by Adele Johnson. It was a production that probably appealed most to English-speaking audiences nostalgic for Victorian light opera.
After the opening night fireworks exploded in the sky over rain-soaked Wexford, the curtain rose for a performance of Le Maschere, Pietro Mascani’s homage to the traditions of Italian opera buffa and commedia dell’arte. Stefano Ricci’s production began with the arrival of masked singers in the genre’s traditional costumes surrounding the stall audience and each singer introducing their characters in the prologue.
When the characters took to the main stage, they stepped out of their standard costumes and into the more comfortable attire of residents of a modern “Wellness” spa. This concept requires little in the costume department, but a cast dressed in terrycloth robes and scrubs doesn’t make much of a spectacle. It has a convoluted plot, sillier than most, with thwarted lovers and magic dusts that even Mascani himself had reservations about, and there was some weird dancing.
The famous premiere of the opera was in simultaneous performances in six Italian houses in 1901 and was not considered a success. Wexford rattled him well. The music is pleasant and well played by the Festival Orchestra under Fionnuala Hunt, and the final ensembles were particularly well executed, but the production did not convince that this Mascani rarity is for the overlooked masterpiece box.
The three main productions recorded an ordered running time of 2 and a half hours each. Outside of the headline shows, there’s plenty going on with a busy schedule of short works, recitals and community opera. Lady Gregory in America, a second collaboration between Colm Tóibín and Alberto Caruso featuring “pocket operas” and a drama about the scandalous episodes of Puccini’s life, created by W Niall Morris, gave the young artists a chance to shine.
- The Wexford Opera Festival runs until November 2