Tickets on sale as Wexford Festival Opera invites audiences to journey to a world where music and myth merge

Irish Independent

10-05-2025

As general booking opens this week, Rosetta gives us an insight into her thoughts behind this year's programme which is around the theme of Myths and Legends, and some highlights audiences can look forward to.
This year for Wexford Festival Opera 2025, we journey into a world where music and myth merge, where the legends of old are brought to life by the soaring power of the human voice. Lyric opera, a timeless art form, has long drawn inspiration from the myths and legends that shape our collective imagination. It is a vessel through which ancient stories are renewed, reinterpreted, and reborn.
Myths and legends are the beating heart of human storytelling. They explain the unexplainable, personify our dreams, and confront our fears. They speak of gods and mortals, of love and betrayal, of triumph and tragedy. From the timeless epics of Greece and Rome to the heroic sagas of Northern Europe, these stories remind us who we are and who we aspire to be.
And lyric opera, with its unique combination of music, drama, and visual spectacle, has always been the perfect stage for such tales. When words fall short of expressing the ineffable, music takes over. A sweeping aria becomes the voice of a hero's longing, a haunting motif captures the villain's sinister intentions, and the chorus becomes the pulse of a community's collective soul.
Consider the Greek myths, immortalized in works like Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice or Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. Here, we find tales of undying love and the human quest to defy fate itself. In the Northern sagas, such as Wagner's monumental Der Ring des Nibelungen, the gods walk among mortals, forging a world as fragile as it is magnificent—a mirror of our own struggles and desires.
But lyric opera does more than retell old stories. It transforms them. Monteverdi's L'Orfeo gave us the birth of opera itself, and with it, a new way to feel the heartbreak of Orpheus's journey. Berlioz's Les Troyens immersed us in the grandeur and devastation of the Trojan War, not as distant myth, but as an immediate, human tragedy. Each note, each phrase, reinvents the myth, casting it anew for each generation.
Why do we keep returning to these ancient stories? Because they remain relevant. They address universal themes: the power of love, the inevitability of loss, the clash between destiny and free will. They speak to us now as they did centuries ago. And in lyric opera, these themes become visceral, unforgettable.
For this, the 74th Wexford Festival Opera, we are delighted to feature three main stage operas, all of which will be Irish premieres.
Conducted by Marcus Bosch and directed by someone very well known to Wexford audiences Ben Barnes, Le Trouvere by Giuseppe Verdi is a rare chance to hear Verdi's French version of Il trovatore. The opera's intricate plot revolves around the rivalry for the love of the young Leonora between the troubadour Manrique and the Comte de Lune.
George Petrou will conduct and direct Deidamia, George Frideric Handel's last Italian opera before he turned to oratorio, which is we feel, an unjustly neglected tragi-comic masterpiece.
Francesco Cilluffo will return to Wexford again this time to conduct The Magic Fountain by Frederick Delius, which will be directed by Christopher Luscombe. A lyric drama in three acts, with a libretto by the composer, The Magic Fountain is set in a mythical, exotic location, it centres around the legend of a magical fountain that grants eternal youth. This production is supported by The Delius Trust.
Alongside these we have so much more for audiences to explore including a performance by the Wexford Factory artists of Il Viaggio a Reims by Gioachino Rossini marking the 200th anniversary of the opera which Manuel Hartinger will conduct and which I will direct myself, and this year's Community Opera The Little Midsummer Night's Dream, a re-adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Benjamin Britten, conducted by Luca Capoferri and directed by Heather Hadrill with the collaboration of Elizabeth Drwal. All the community cast and the team are already working on this production with their usual enthusiasm and great commitment.
This year's Pocket Operas will be La Tragedie de Carmen by George Bizet sung in French with English dialogue and The Dwarf (Der Zwerg) by Alexander Zemlinsky in a Wexford commissioned English translation and we are delighted to present a new WFO commission by Colm Tóibín and Andrew Synnott composer the Late night event Urban Legends. We are also delighted to welcome Artist-in-Residence for 2025 and 2026, composer and writer Ailís Ní Ríain.
There is so much to experience, explore and enjoy in this year's Festival. As we immerse ourselves in the myths and legends brought to life through the magic of opera, let us remember: these are not just stories of the past. They are stories of the present, told in music that transcends time. They call on us to reflect, to dream, and to feel deeply. And above all, they remind us that we, too, are part of a greater story – one that spans generations, cultures, and the ages.
So, let the curtain rise. Let the myths sing. And let the legends live on.