All set for his swansong: Director David Agler highlights 15 years at Wexford Festival Opera

As he prepares to stand down at Wexford Festival Opera, director David Agler tells Cathy Desmond about the highlights of his 15 years at the helm.

ALL is calm in Wexford as I visit the organisers of the town’s annual opera festival. It’s the company day off, explains director David Agler as he ushers me through the stage door for a tour around the backstage area.

Agler has been artistic director for the last fifteen years, the most prolific in the history of the festival. overseeing a total of 45 main house productions more than any other director in the history of the festival.

During his tenure, the Theatre Royal was replaced by a new opera house, the equal of the best in the world. The establishment of a professional chorus raised production standards and after a period of turbulence in the pit, the Festival Orchestra is a stable aspect of the productions. This is Agler’s final season and there is the sense that he is savouring these final weeks at the helm.

There is nothing of the theatrical luvvie about the quietly-spoken Canadian who was destined for a contemplative life in a monastery before he was diverted to opera. We stop off backstage where a giant cake forms the centrepiece of the set while Agler exchanges some pleasantries in Italian with the stage crew.

Here and there, he stops to point to former staff whose photographs hang on the walls. He pauses briefly to show me one of his favourite images. Not a grand scene or a glamourous celebrity, but a quirky snapshot captured by photographer Padraig Grant of the contrasting expressions of four Wexford women as they queue for confession.

It is an indication that even while this director has an international focus, he has a keen eye on local affairs. He muses ruefully that the Wexford hurling team who won the All-Ireland the first year he came to Wexford didn’t repeat the feat during the rest of his tenure. There are tales of nights spent at lively sing-songs in pubs and presbyteries, the apparent spontaneity of these occasions intrigues him.

There is something infectious about Agler’s enthusiasm for all the experiences that Wexford has brought his way. From a large airy office on the top floor, Agler supervises the operation that coordinates the endeavours of 240 people. It is a spartan space devoid of clutter.

Pressed for the highlights, he recalls his emotion on hearing music for the first time in the new house in 2008. “You can have the finest acousticians, but you never know until you build a theatre what is going to happen. When the orchestra began to play the overture of Tutti in Maschera, I admit I began to cry. I couldn’t imagine that we would be so lucky.

“It was a miracle what they did in the old theatre, but I remember when we did Snegarochka the same year and I saw the great pillars rise up doing technical things we could never do before it was just so impressive.”

There were less happy days too. He recalls the havoc Hurricane Ophelia wreaked on a difficult night in 2017. “We were having a hard time controlling the lights. Then a little power surge caused a malfunction and set off all the fire alarms. It was windy like you couldn’t believe and all the shutters in the fly tower opened.

We vacated the theatre in under four minutes and here were all these people out in the cold in the street. I did not like that day.

The names of singers he has engaged over the years trip off his tongue and he takes an obvious pride on their subsequent success.

“I remember the first time we heard Igor Golovatenko in Christina. It was the first time he sang outside Russia — he was fine find.”

He refers to several Irish singers, many of whom started careers in the chorus. Agler has faced criticism for not hiring more homegrown talent, a facet he acknowledges but admits no misgivings.

“A lot of people had unrealistic expectations of Wexford and some in the cultural sector think Wexford has a special responsibility to Irish artists. We do but our larger responsibility is to our public. They come to experience works they wouldn’t see anywhere else and they are going to hear perhaps the next Juan Diego Florez.”

Florez appeared in Wexford in 1996, the first year that Agler came. Tenor Joseph Calleja and sopranos Mirella Freni, Angela Meade and mezzo-soprano Daniela Barcellona all made early appearances here.

“Elaine (Padmore, former director) and I both agree on one thing. We’ve both been in theatres where there was lots of money, but these were the happiest days of our lives here in Wexford. We were free to do anything we wanted, and we found a way to do it. I’ve deeply loved putting people together and seeing what they can do. When they say ‘David — thank you’, I say the only thanks you owe me is to go out and be fantastic.”

As he settles into his eighth decade, Agler appears quietly content, ready to hand over to the next generation and withdraw to his home in Vancouver to enjoy his garden, his books and his dogs.

The 68th Wexford Opera Festival runs from today to November 3. www.wexfordfestival.com

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