Programme 2012

Obsessed by a woman who is never seen, Federico ruins the lives of those he loves, as well as his own. Love pervades this story of a young man, Federico, and his family and friends in the countryside near Arles in the south of France. But this is no rural idyll, this is real life. The passions and emotions of Federico, his mother Rosa, Vivetta, who has always loved him, and Metifio, his rival in love, have a powerful universal resonance. Cilèa’s 1897 opera depicts the ... (click to read more)

Love brings them together; feuding fathers keep them apart. Only tragedy will reunite them. Written between 1899 and 1901, A Village Romeo and Juliet was the fourth of Delius’s six operas and is generally regarded as his finest. Sali and Vreli, his Romeo and Juliet, have the misfortune to live in a small village community in Switzerland, the children of farmers who are at loggerheads over the ownership of a worthless piece of land that by rights should belong to a man known as the Dark ... (click to read more)

It was lack of money in real life that persuaded Mozart to try his hand at writing a Zauberoper (‘magic opera’), a popular style of Singspiel with audience-pleasing spectacular scenic effects. Mozart’s music for the pseudo-Oriental fairy tale, Lulu, or the MagicFlute, was an immediate success. Audiences then, as now, were captivated by the opera, by the fantastical characters on stage and by Mozart’s ravishing music. Poignantly, he died a few weeks after the first ... (click to read more)

The programme includes Salon dances and Celtic fantasies for piano, and Canzonets on the four seasons for voice and piano, by William V Wallace.   To celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of William Vincent Wallace (1812.1865), the Waterford-born composer of Maritana (1845), pianist Una Hunt and mezzo-soprano Maire Flavin perform a programme of music from the William Vincent Wallace Album. This is awonderfully ornate album of Wallacefs music published in New York in 1854, which is now ... (click to read more)

Nathalie at Night is the first of the Late Night Concerts which takes place on the 26 October at 11:00 pm and will feature soprano Nathalie Paulin (La Baronne in La Cour de Célimène in 2011) and pianist Adam Burnette. They promise to blur the lines between opera and cabaret as they perform hits from 1920s Tin Pan Alley, the satirical ballrooms of the Weimar Cabaret and the naughty nightspots of Paris. The second of the Late Night Concerts at 11:00 pm on 2 November is the ... (click to read more)

by the winner of 2012 Dublin International Piano Competition The final of the competition takes place on 15 May and the name of the winner will be announced on our website. Wexford Opera House

As part of the celebrations in 2012 of the 150th anniversary of Delius’s birth, Wexford Festival Opera is showing four screenings of Ken Russell’s 1968 biographical film Song of Summer at 14:30 on the days of the evening performances of Delius’s opera A Village Romeo and Juliet.Song of Summer is regarded as the finest of the biographical films Russell made for the BBC and is based on Eric Fenby’s 1936 memoir, Delius as I Knew Him, about the last years of Delius’s ... (click to read more)

Opera is all around us! From Hollywood movies, TV talent shows and ads, most people will recognise several operatic arias and duets, even if they can’t name them. But an aria on its own can’t fully convey the passion, emotion or excitement of seeing and hearing the whole story and all the music in a live performance on stage. If you would like to enter the world of opera our newDaytime Events Package is for you! This includes two Festival favourites: a lunchtime recital and a ... (click to read more)