13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Colm Tóibín teams up with Wexford Festival Opera for new work inspired by town's Main Street
Colm Tóibín, author of award-winning novels including The Master, Brooklyn, and Long Island, has collaborated with composer Andrew Synnott, marking the second time the Wexford-born writer has worked with the festival.
This new work, Urban Legends, will commence on October 19 and will be performed as late-night operas at 11pm in Green Acres Art Gallery in Wexford town. Each performance will last approximately 20 minutes.
This follows Mr Tóibín's and Alberto Caruso's collaboration for WFO 2024 with their Pocket Opera (Opera Beag) Lady Gregory: In America.
Libretto for this new work is by Mr Tóibín while music is by Mr Synnott, a long-time friend of the festival.
The work is inspired by the urban legend that if you walk from one end of Wexford's Main Street to the other end, you will pass the person you are going to marry.
Two young lovers set out from either end of the Main Street at noon and – according to legend – are destined to meet and get married. Both are single, both are in search of love. Will they meet? And if they do, will they fall for each other? Each night, we find out more clues of when and where – at what point on the street – they will finally meet and sing a love duet.
These three different short late-night operas explore this legend over three separate nights at Green Acres Gallery. Each 20-minute stand-alone performance will be presented twice during the festival and can be enjoyed individually or as part of the series.
Artistic Director Rosetta Cucchi said: 'I am so delighted that Colm Tóibín and Andrew Synnott have come together to create this special new work. This project began with an initial conversation that Colm and I had last year. Wexford Festival Opera is so intrinsically linked with Wexford town itself. Creating a work around one of the urban legends here seemed to fit so beautifully into the overall WFO theme this year of myths of legends and I can't wait to experience it myself during WFO 2025.'
Booking is now open at for the 74th Wexford Festival opera which explores the theme of Myths and Legends will run from October 17 to November 1.
