Wexford Festival Opera, which begins later this month, opens with the most popular work it has featured in years. The 2025 edition’s theme of myths and legends has led it to Verdi’s Il Trovatore, but in the rarely heard French version, Le Trouvère, for which Verdi composed extra music. Handel’s Deidamia, the composer’s farewell to Italian opera, is based on a myth about the childhood of Achilles, in which he is brought up as a girl. With the year’s rarest opera, The Magic Fountain, the festival continues its exploration of the English composer Frederick Delius in a work that explores the fate of an unlikely couple and a quest for the fountain of eternal youth. Their directors tell us about bringing the operas to the stage.
Le Trouvère: Ben Barnes
Ben Barnes is directing this French version of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, which was first performed in Paris on January 12th, 1857
Why does Verdi matter to you?
Many, many years ago, with Cork City Opera, I directed a production of Rigoletto, and I’ve obviously been to a number of Verdi operas in the meantime. It’s the unrelenting passion of the music and the beauty of the melodies. I find, as a nonmusician, working on composers like Poulenc and Britten was an acquired taste. But with Puccini or Verdi or Mozart, you instantly fall in love with the music, and it’s in your head forever after.
What’s special about Le Trouvère?
I’ve seen Il Trovatore, but I’m not overly familiar with it. So I wasn’t coming to Le Trouvère by way of comparison. The story has a great deal of realism on one level, and on another it’s very mythological. I’ve always tried to have a balance, a sort of a hybrid between making the work very truthful and creating something quite theatrical. I regard Verdi as one of those composers who allow your imagination to be freer in terms of how you might approach the staging.
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Why is it a rarity today?
Verdi wanted it to be performed at the Paris Opera, and at that time one of the requirements there was that there would be a ballet. So he created this beautiful ballet music and also revised some parts. It’s probably musicologists who will appreciate the subtle differences, but there are refinements which I believe improve the score.
What are the challenges of directing it?
There are challenges associated with directing an opera for the Wexford Festival. You’re sharing the stage with two other operas, and you only get your chorus on the days that you’re on stage. This opera has quite a lot of chorus, and I’ve extended that by having the chorus on stage for the entire last act of the opera. Technically that’s a challenge at this particular festival.
Where and when have you set it, and why?
I wanted to honour the Spanish setting for the opera. There are explicit references to Spain in the character of Azucena, and you have the wonderful hymn to Spain, to her country. But I did feel that setting it in some obscure late-medieval conflict known only to medieval historians of the Iberian peninsula was not going to be very helpful. So the opera starts with an inscription which ends with, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,” which is germane to the story of the opera. Through Hemingway it immediately brings us into the world of the Spanish civil war. So rifles, and so on, rather than swords.
What’s your favourite moment?
I know it probably sounds like a very, very stock answer. But the Anvil Chorus is one of the great choruses in all of opera. And we’re staging it in a special way.
How would you describe Le Trouvère in three words?
Drama, passion, fatalism.
Le Trouvère is at the National Opera House, as part of Wexford Festival Opera, on October 17th, 21st, 24th and 29th and on November 1st
Deidamia: George Petrou
George Petrou is directing and conducing Handel’s opera, which was first performed in London on January 10th, 1741
Why does Handel matter to you?
Handel is a big part of my life and is one of the main reasons that I took up conducting, and then turned towards opera and eventually into staging operas. It’s not only about the style; it’s beyond the baroque style. It’s about the possibility to relate Handel’s music with our personal emotions and the modern aesthetic of melody. He was one of the greatest melodists of all time. He is the only composer from the early 18th century who managed to create real opera. He’s a dramatist. He looks far beyond his time and creates characters that are believable, who develop during the course of the story. The way he underlines the human emotion with all sorts of different musical tricks and traits is incredible.
What’s special about Deidamia?
It’s his last opera. The London public had got a little bit fed up with the long Italian opera tradition. So Handel came up with the English oratorio, a much simpler form in terms of storytelling. And in Deidamia he tried to hold on to the genre of Italian opera seria one more time. If Deidamia was the only surviving opera by Handel, we would still consider him to be a genius.
Why is it a rarity?
Well, he wrote 42 operas. So what can you do? Verdi has less operas, and still we play five. Bellini has five, I think, and we play two. Some works are more loved than others.
What are the challenges of conducting and directing it?
I would say they’re less of a challenge than just conducting it. A lot of times I’m very fortunate and very happy. I work with stage directors with whom I totally relate. But also a lot of times I don’t relate. This is not because they’re not good. It’s because simply we can’t always relate. So I’m used to being flexible. But it’s a blessing to be able to visualise my own image and my own musical interpretation. It’s nice from time to time to take my fortune in my own hands and make my own mistakes.
Where and when have you set it?
The myth is good. It’s a good story. So I thought I should not make fun of it. I should respect the idea that there is a young man dressed as a woman in a believable way. We had the great luck to have Bruno De Sá, who is a specialist in this kind of approach. He can be as believable as a man as he can be as a woman. And instead of putting the action in ancient Greece, I’ve put it in modern Greece, on the tourist island of Skyros. A beautiful landscape, a beautiful sea, a country fair, a museum, all sorts of things, and I try to mix these two worlds. Not in the way that they interact, but they coexist.
How would you describe Deidamia in three words?
Handelian baroque magic.
Deidamia is at the National Opera House, as part of Wexford Festival Opera, on October 18th, 22nd, 26th and 30th
The Magic Fountain: Christopher Luscombe
Christopher Luscombe is directing this opera that Delius composed in 1893-95 and was first performed in Kiel, in Germany, on December 2nd, 1997
Why does Delius matter to you?
I have a fondness for Delius because he’s a figure who’s regularly patronised and sidelined. Several of the singers in this production had never even heard of him or knew a note of his music. I think he’s a really important writer. And I can’t believe this work has been neglected to the extent it has. [It seems only ever to have been staged a handful of times.]
What’s special about The Magic Fountain?
The location is very special, very particular. It’s so unbelievably romantic and epic. And short. It’s only an hour and a half of music. But it takes you on such an amazing adventure across the Atlantic and into Florida and the Everglades. It’s a lush and romantic setting to go with the lush and romantic music. And I think it’s a very good story, one that audiences will really enjoy hearing.
Why is it such a rarity today?
I can see why most of the main opera companies are now so reliant on the warhorses to get them through a difficult time financially. Wexford is such a shining beacon, putting on this rare repertoire. The main companies just do not do obscure repertoire at the moment.
What are the challenges of directing it?
It is epic. It’s cinematic. It’s curious that, although he wrote it before the age of cinema, he has quite elaborate stage directions which suggest the most exotic, amazing, epic location of the Atlantic Ocean and then the Everglades and then this mythical fountain. It’s really quite hard to imagine how you’d ever get that up on stage. I’m blessed with a brilliant designer, Simon Higlett, who’s designed an amazing set
Where and when have you set it?
I’ve set it in the period that it’s set in by Delius, which is the 16th century. Partly because I think it is based on various tales of real adventurers who went to America at that time as explorers, but also I feel an obligation because it’s done so rarely. It would be perverse to put it in a different time frame. We have done it in a very abstract way. I just wanted to conjure up a sense of that world.
What’s your favourite moment?
The love duet in the third act. We have this antihero, Solano, and this angry, bitter, troubled woman who he falls in love with, Watawa, a Native American. They are the most unlikely match. Yet in the course of this short opera we really do believe in them coming together, and they have this absolutely ecstatic love duet, which I think is the climax of the piece. It’s ravishingly beautiful.
How would you describe The Magic Fountain in three words?
Magical, romantic, beautiful.
The Magic Fountain is at the National Opera House, as part of Wexford Festival Opera, on October 19th, 23rd, 25th and 31st
