60th Wexford Festival Opera - Expressions & Impressions – part 2

By George Fleeton

The Lunchtime Recitals at Wexford are always oversubscribed and for good reason too.

But the age profile of the audiences for these events is ‘classic golden years’. Where are the young people?

I attended three of the nine scheduled recitals, enough to get the full flavour of these popular events, and to see another side of some of the Festival’s principal singers’ solo talents.

Krzysztof Szumanski

In his recital, this Polish bass-baritone offered five love songs by Richard Strauss, followed by three dramatically expressed Polish songs.

He has a big, resonating good-humoured voice which well served his subsequent choice of arias from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, von Weber’s Der Freischütz and Rachmaninoff’s Aleko.

Lucia Cirillo

This Italian mezzo-soprano has a beautiful tone, but her recital programme was quite obscure, although she took great pains to explain the gist of each song in advance: some Mozart leider (the last sung in French) and a four-part Mahler song cycle (perhaps too long in the circumstances).

But she was best with four songs by Tosti, fully expressive and holding nothing back in delivery.

Claudia Boyle

is an Irish soprano, and a proficient cellist, whose progress we have followed and supported in recent years, and who never fails to impress.

Her Recital was breathtaking, her selection of music diverse and geared to show off every corner of her voice and technique and her generosity of spirit exceptional in that she had invited Italian tenor Luigi Boccia to join her (and she didn’t forget to publicly acknowledge her sponsors, Soroptimist International Wexford).

Claudia has recently understudied Berg’s Lulu with French soprano Patricia Petibon, and returns to Rome in February to continue working there with Riccardo Muti.

She started her programme in Wexford with the two Queen of Night’s arias from Mozart’s Magic Flute, thenSchubert’s Goethe-inspired lied,Ganymed, and the Vilja song from The Merry Widow (as sing-along).

Boccia was then graciously given the stage to sing Il miotesoro… (from Don Giovanni), and Tosti’s song Ideale (which had once been recorded by the last castrato Moreschi in Rome over 100 years ago).

Boyle and her guest tenor then joined forces, and worked their way through Verdi’s La Traviata, in reverse order: Parigi, o cara… (Act 111), Ah, fors’è lui… / Sempre libera.. and the brindisi or drinking song from Act 1.

This Recital earned the first standing ovation I have witnessed at these events – and that was even before the programme was finished!

Brass Concert, and Dr Tom Walsh Lecture

Two other events are worth a mention. A Brass Concert in a Catholic church at 11am on a Friday – yet another of the quirky events Wexford is good at.

The ensemble was drawn from members of the Festival Opera orchestra, led by Dan Newell, and all eleven instrumentalists were soberly dressed, like seminarians at the high altar, so who could possibly take offence then, even at a medley of rock hits composed by Brian May and Freddie Mercury of Queen?

Between numbers, we were given short lessons on trumpets (the piccolo, the B-flat and the E-flat versions), the French horn and the flügelhorn, the tambourine and a drum (who looked to me suspiciously like the bodhrán used in Irish traditional music).

J S Bach was featured, as was Bizet’s Carmen Suite preceded by a selection of old French dances – all very well received and refreshing music making.

 Local GP, Dr Tom Walsh had founded the Opera festivals in Wexford 60 years ago, and since his death in 1988, there has been an annual Lecture in his memory.

Walsh was the first Artistic Director, and he was succeeded by Brian Dickie - from 1967 to 1973 - who was on hand to give this year’s diamond anniversary lecture, in the presence of Tom Walsh’s daughter and grand-daughter, who were most warmly welcomed to the event.

Dickie has the pedigree for this: he was general administrator of Glyndebourne Festival Opera, general director of the Canadian Opera Company, and is general director of Chicago Opera Theater.

His talk was anecdotal, totally free of hubris, and supplied much added value to something which in other hands might have been bum-numbing.

He welcomed us to the society of opera nuts, and regretted that there are not any pre-Mozart operas at these Festivals (a view I would share passionately – it may not fit the audience, the new opera house or the Wexford tradition, but isn’t it time to think outside the comfort zones and to prove democracy is not fatal for such out-of-town Festivals?)

Still to come on DownNews: comment on an unscented pot pourri called Mad for Opera, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Donizetti’s Gianni di Parigi (with introductory talk), Thomas’ La Cour deCelimene and Statkowski’s Mária.