The Barber of Seville, Lismore Music Festival

Lismore Music Festival had much to contend with at the weekend.

The torrential rain on Saturday night would have led most promoters to cancel an event as ambitious as a new outdoor production of Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville in the courtyard at Lismore Castle, but the organisers shielded the audience and most of the performers from the elements with a strategically placed tent. Their courage paid rich dividends: for anyone who loves opera, the production was surely the highlight of the year.

Rossini would surely have approved of the modern touches brought to this most playful of operas. There were cheers when the barber Figaro, played by Irish baritone Owen Gilhooley, arrived on a Vespa scooter, and much laughs when Javier Abreu, playing Count Almaviva, ran out with an umbrella. Damon Nestor Ploumis cannot have been much perturbed by the downpour: as Almaviva’s love rival Dr Bartolo, he was already required to fall face first into the fountain, around which much of the action was played out.