Wexford Festival Opera reviews: A whiff of Gilbert & Sullivan from enjoyable production of The Critic
A scene from The Critic by Charles Villers Stanford, at Wexford Festival Opera. Picture: Patricio Cassinoni
Wexford Festival eschewed tragedy, the usual mode of grand opera and chose three comic operas as the main productions at the 73rd annual festival. Theatre within Theatre was the theme for this year’s festival.
The 100th year anniversary of Charles Villiers Stanford has prompted a renewed focus on the Dublin-born composer’s work. The Critic, one of Stanford’s nine operas, written in 1915, opened the second night of the festival. Stanford reworked Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s satire written a century earlier as an operatic work.
A trio of actors, Mark Lambert, Jonathan White and Arthur Riordan get the best lines and most of the laughs and I’ve rarely heard a Wexford audience laugh as heartily. Critic Mr Sneer is invited to a rehearsal of the extravagant, Mr Puff and the pompous Mr Dangle’s new work, ‘The Spanish Armada’.
Conor Hanratty’s production has a sense of the world of Gilbert & Sullivan, a feature enhanced by John Comiskey’s picture book sets. There was splendid singing in all the major and small roles and the cast ham it up to good effect. There was a Monthy Pythonesque interlude as local thespian Tony Brennan took to the stage in the silent role of Lord Burleigh accompanied in the pit by an extended viola solo played by Adele Johnson. It was a production which likely appealed most to an English-speaking audience nostalgic for Victorian light opera.
After the opening night fireworks exploded in the sky over a rain sodden Wexford, the curtain went up on a performance of Le Maschere, Pietro Mascagni’s homage to the Italian opera buffa and commedia dell’arte traditions. Stefano Ricci’s production opened with the arrival of masked singers in the genre’s traditional costumes flanking the stalls audience and each singer introducing their characters in the prologue.
When the characters took to the main stage, they stepped out of their stock costumes and into the more comfortable attire of denizens of a modern ‘Wellness’ Spa. This concept makes little demand on the costume dept but a cast dressed in towelling robes and scrubs doesn’t make for much of a spectacle. There is a convoluted plot, sillier than most, with thwarted lovers and magic powders that even Mascagni himself had reservations about and there was some bizarre dancing.
The opera notoriously premiered in simultaneous performances in six Italian houses in 1901 and was not deemed a success. Wexford gave it a good rattle. The music is pleasant and well played by the Festival Orchestra under Fionnuala Hunt and the finale ensembles were particularly well executed, but the production didn’t convince that this Mascagni rarity is one for the neglected masterpiece box.
The three main productions clocked in at a tidy running time of 2 and half hours each. Outside of the headline shows, there is much going on with a busy schedule of short works, recitals and a community opera. Lady Gregory in America, a second collaboration between Colm Tóibín and Alberto Caruso features among the ‘pocket operas’ and a drama around the scandalous episodes in the life of Puccini crafted by W Niall Morris gave an opportunity for young artists to shine.
- Wexford Festival Opera continues until November 2
