Sir, - I recently sang Figaro in Opera Ireland's Barber of Seville, and feel it my duty to publicise my outrage and that of fellow classical musicians at the latest extravaganza of trash - in the name of the new millennium - using one of the great contributions to the millennium we leave behind, G.F. Handel's Messiah.
This is not about purism, which deals with the finer points of musicianship, such as ornamentation, or "period" versus "modern" instruments. In this case a moustache has been added to the Mona Lisa. We are not even on the same planet as purism. My outrage is a result of the following:
The millennium committee paid more to fund this calamity, led by overseas pop-artists, than our own national opera company receives in a year. Dublin is the only capital city in the civilised world to be denied a full-time opera house and company, on the grounds of expense and lack of demand for "non-Irish" culture. Yet the Government of this land of saints and scholars sees fit to spend £700,000 plus another £100,000 of RTE's budget to massacre a work premiered in Dublin 257 years ago in the hope of selling TV rights and glossy videos on the universal market for mediocrity, in the wake of other Celtic Tiger successes such as Riverdance.
I might add that Opera Ireland's "season" - a single week of opera - sold out a fortnight before opening, such was the demand.
The Celtic Tiger will maintain its money-spinning youth, but the country's soul has surely been sold this time, and with it its right to claim a cultural stake in the Europe it has milked since 1992. Do you think the French or the Germans would feed their high culture to the dogs? - Yours, etc.,
Sam McElroy, Pearse Street, Dublin 2.