The 2006 programme of events for Wexford Festival Opera was formally launched yesterday by Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche.
The festival is currently homeless, as its traditional venue, the Theatre Royal, is being rebuilt and will not be ready until 2008. In the absence of the Theatre Royal, the festival will be held at the Dún Mhuire theatre, which will be specially transformed for the occasion by designer Joe Vanek.
From Thursday, October 25th, until Sunday, November 5th, the festival will offer a 12-day programme of 30 performances, including productions of Donizetti's 1826 Don Gregorio and US composer Conrad Susa's 1972 Transformations.
Don Gregorio is a revised version of the Donizetti opera that was originally scheduled, L'ajo nell'imbarazzo, and Transformations replaces the originally announced double bill of Falla's Master Peter's Puppet Show and Stravinsky's Renard.
The cast for the Donizetti is Italian. The reason for this, explained artistic director David Agler, is that the work includes dialogue in Neapolitan dialect, and Italy seemed the best place to look for appropriate singers.
Transformations is a venture into an area that's not quite opera as Wexford audiences have known it. The composer himself called it an "entertainment."
David Agler describes it as "one of the best attempts at music theatre", and the cast, he explained, will have to be able to shift between Motown, the Andrews Sisters and Billie Holiday, as well as more conventionally operatic singing style.
For the first time since 2000, the festival's orchestra will be Irish.