With an exciting programme of magically themed productions, the annual Wexford Festival Opera is set to transport audiences to another world.
Running from 21 October to 6 November 2022, the 71st Wexford Festival Opera will once again enchant thousands of opera fans as it plays out in the historic Viking city in Ireland’s Ancient East.
Famed for its friendliness and focus on forgotten gems, the festival will this year celebrate the theme of Magic & Music with highlights including revivals of three main stage operas, each running for four days.
La tempesta (1850), composed by Fromental Halévy with a libretto by Eugene Scribe after Shakespeare’s The Tempest, will open the festival in grand style.
The exotic Lalla Roukh (1862), composed by Félicien David with a libretto by Michael Carré and Hippolyte Lucas, will transport audiences to India, while being based on a poem by the Irishman Thomas Moore.
And Dvořák’s last opera, Armida, tying together many strands from across operatic history, will enjoy a much-deserved revival.
Other festival productions will include Cinderella, written by 17-year-old composer Alma Elizabeth Deutscher, and two Pocket Opera|Opera Beag: The Master based on the award-winning novel by Colm TóibÃn and The Spectre Knight by Alfred Cellier.
There will also be a number of lunchtime recitals, gala performances, lectures, interviews, historical tours and pop-up events across the town.
The Wexford Festival Pop-Ups are a series of free multidisciplinary performance events featuring music, drama, singing and dance, performed in non-traditional settings around Wexford town. Enabling everyone to enjoy the world-class talent at the festival, the pop-up performances are staged in unlikely venues from cafes to shop windows.
The festival will come to a rousing conclusion with a final concert on 6 November performed at the piano and conducted by the acclaimed Barry Douglas and the Wexford Festival Opera Orchestra.
The key events will be staged in the award-winning National Opera House in Wexford but the exuberance of the festival spills into the streets, pubs and restaurants which will be buzzing with life.
Just two hours from Dublin, Wexford town, with its winding medieval streets, historic buildings and pretty harbour is a delightful place to visit at any time of year. But across the 17-day Wexford Festival Opera, it will become an exceptional destination bursting with magic and music and offering the warmest of welcomes to opera fans from around the world.
