Tom Sutcliffe

Troubled Wexford

The new Wexford Opera House has certainly raised the profile of opera in Ireland.

The new Wexford Opera House has certainly raised the profile of opera in Ireland. You cannot argue with a prize-winning building that is one of just four large purpose-built opera auditoriums in these islands, alongside Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and the Wales Millennium Centre. Built with Irish taxpayers’ money, it would be a sick Irish joke to mothball the place within a year of its grand successful opening. Yet the Wexford Festival’s obsession with traditional dress-code (black tie, long frocks) adds to the feeling that opera belongs to a class with alien tastes. Meanwhile, even the Abbey Theatre — which scoffs the lion’s share of Irish performing-arts subsidy — has no permanent ensemble. Dublin’s appetite for theatre is not that great, and the Abbey, like our National Theatre, treats actors as casual temps the way dockowners used to treat dockers.

The Irish economy is in a tailspin, Wexford is plastered with estate agents’ signs. The aspirational restaurants of the past decade have migrated or collapsed. It feels like a 1930s-style depression, and could last years. The current Festival cut six of its main opera performances and started a week later than originally billed. Also given the chop are the cheap small-scale operas given by understudies and chorus members fringe-style at Dun Mhuire in the High Street. That slashed 1.2 million euros from costs, 200,000 of them orchestral fees for those extra performances. But gave no help for local morale.

The Irish Arts Council has been backing a plan by Randall Shannon to merge the Festival with Dublin’s two modest companies. (In the 1990s Shannon ran Opera Northern Ireland in Belfast extremely well, till Northern Ireland’s Arts Council pulled the plug.) Opera Theatre Company has built its reputation on Handel and small-scale touring work, while Opera Ireland has for years done two short seasons of three or four operas with semi-pro chorus and stars.

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