Blackwater Valley Opera Festival: Macbeth comes to Lismore
Soprano Abigail LaDuke at the launch of Blackwater Valley Opera Festival. Picture: Patrick Browne
The Blackwater Valley Opera Festival opens next week with an abundance of classical music events over 8 days and nights. With much more on offer than the centrepiece production, the festival has carved out a distinctive niche on the Irish cultural calendar. This year the festival has added extra days and expanded into more venues beyond the base at the Lismore Castle stable yard. There are few better ways to spend a summer evening than wandering through the gorgeous walled gardens of the castle, smelling the roses and relishing the anticipation of an evening of bel canto arias with maybe a flute of Bellini to add a dash of fizz.
Festival director Eamonn Carroll says there are over 100 performers involved in this year’s events. Add in the technical crews; the army of volunteers; the caterers; it is a big operation but Carroll who took over at BVOF in 2019 was not new to such ventures. “My first real engagement with opera was at Wexford. I was thrown in at the deep end with a Russian opera, Snegorochka. It was the first production at the new National Opera House and seeing how it all came together for the first time was fantastic,” says Carroll.
