WATERFORD regional airport and Wexford Festival Opera have joined forces for the festival in a bid to boost tourism numbers in the southeast. Anybody flying into Waterford Airport to go to the festival will be able to take a free shuttle bus to Wexford.
The travel partnership was announced at Waterford Airport ahead of the opening of the 61st festival, which takes place from October 24th to November 4th.
Graham Doyle, the chief executive officer of Waterford airport, said: “It is a partnership that works really well and we have a huge number of visitors across our UK route network who avail of the special travel arrangements for the festival.”
He described the festival as “a huge asset to tourism in the southeast region” and a key cultural event that attracted more visitors year on year.
The chief executive of Wexford Festival Trust, David McLoughlin, said the festival’s partnership with Waterford Airport over the past few years had proved popular with the festival’s large number of UK-based patrons, “providing them with a friendly, value-for-money and more convenient alternative for accessing the festival by air”.
This year’s programme includes three main opera productions: L’Arlesiana by Francesco Cilèa; Le Roi malgré lui by Emmanuel Chabrier and A Village Romeo and Juliet by Frederick Delius.
The festival is the only one in the UK and Ireland to stage Delius’s opera.
Spokeswoman Elizabeth Rose Brown said: “His operas are rarely staged. What draws visitors to the festival is the array of new talent, discovering the next big thing and . . . [rarely seen] repertoire.”
CONOR KANE