Blackwater Valley Opera Festival: Don Giovanni gets an enjoyable Irish treatment in Lismore
Gavan Ring, Amy Ní Fhearraigh, Carolyn Holt in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, in the grounds of Lismore Castle, during Blackwater Valley Opera Festival 2026. Photo: Frances Marshall
★★★★☆
The Lismore production of Mozart’s dark comedy, was particularly memorable for Roddy Doyle’s ‘Dublinese’ translation. Cork director Tom Creed, in his staging for the stable yard at BVOF also opts to bring the drama up-to-date, with a setting in a swish country club hotel.
Sung in Italian with surtitles, it is a playful, engaging production that accentuates the comedy over the darker, more sinister elements of the piece.
In Aedín Cosgrove’s set, a plangent elevator ding announces the entrance of characters who emerge stage right via sliding doors, toting suitcases and fiddling with key cards before exiting through various room doors. The Commendatore is dispatched to a broom cupboard upon his demise. Hotel staff bustle about with brooms and room service trays. Don Giovanni eventually gets the bum’s rush stage left through the fire exit.
Catherine Fay’s costumes mix a world of gangsta rappers with an up-market white-wedding posse and cross-dressing partygoers. Not everything works and some of the mistaken identities need some suspension of disbelief but there is much to enjoy not least in the changing natural light as day turns to dusk and darkness and birdsong is a natural addition to the sound palette.
All the performers in the splendid cast are well drawn. Baritone Jolyon Loy is a louche Don Giovanni in shades and shiny track suit loping around the stage with a slow swagger trailing his snarky sidekick Leporello (Andrew Murphy) in his wake. Amy Ní Fhearraigh as Donna Anna drew warm applause. Carolyn Holt as Donna Elvira draws much laughter as the spurned lover intent on revenge.
Gavan Ring who sang Masetto here in the 2011 proved a suave Don Ottavio. Aimee Kearney and Dominic Veilleux are endearing in their roles as newly-weds, Masetto and Zerlina. American bass, Valerian Ruminski emerges from the broom cupboard to add gravitas and impressive vocal heft to the final scene.
Front and centre in the pit, Peter Whelan with balletic hand movements drew a rich and nuanced performance from the 30-piece Irish Baroque Orchestra featuring an impressive array of valveless horns and period wind instruments.
While the main festival production grabs the headlines, there are many other interesting events that merit attention at Blackwater Valley Opera Festival. On Tuesday night, a performance of Handel’s Acis and Galatea featured a five strong cast with chorus and small ensemble.
It was good to hear two Irish tenors in top form in the warm acoustic of St Carthage’s Cathedral. Dean Power and soprano Jade Phoenix were the tragic lovers. Subtle lighting effects and movement of the singers around the space added to the dramatic effect.
The festival’s 12-strong chorus shone in a lunchtime programme of arias, duets and ensembles at Villierstown Church. Introductions by festival director, Dieter Kaegi added interesting details and gave the event a sense of shape. One of the loudest cheers was for the hardworking pianist Frasier Hickland, who sensitively accompanied throughout.
Winifred Letts, who died in Dun Laoghaire in 1972, was a prolific publisher of various genres and had a play performed at the Abbey Theatre. Her poetry provided the lyrics for two delightful song cycles by Charles Villiers Stanford. In ‘A Sheaf of Songs from Leinster’ and ‘A Fire of Turf’, Sharon Carty and Benjamin Russell with pianist Finghin Collins charmed with their interpretation of the songs in an afternoon recital in Villierstown Church.
The festival repeated a main work for the first time in its 16-year history, with the late great Cara O’Sullivan among the cast of the 2011 production of Don Giovanni.
A comparison of the listings then and now shows how much this festival has developed over a decade and a half. From the early programme of one opera and a handful of recitals over two days, this year’s events numbered more than two dozen, including three operas, numerous recitals and free open-air events scheduled from noon to midnight across a week in one of Ireland’s most beautiful locations.
Blessed with balmy conditions for many of the events, there was a sense that this festival team have the wind at their back.
