DLR Glasthule Opera Festival

Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin Tues-Sat 27th €40 01-2312929

If the new DLR Glasthule Opera Festival looks on paper a bit like anything in recent past in Ireland it’s the late Bernadette Greevy’s Anna Livia opera festival. There’s the concentration on young (-ish) Irish singers (more thoroughgoing in the new company), and a venture into off-mainstream repertoire (more daring than anything Anna Livia undertook).

Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre, where the Anna Livia festival took place, is far from ideal for opera, but it’s altogether more amenable than Dún Laoghaire’s Pavilion Theatre, where the numbers in the orchestra playing for Glasthule will peak in the low 20s. Anne-Marie O’Sullivan, who founded the new company, is wisely eschewing Anna Livia’s practice of having one creative team working on two separate productions, though she’s brave enough in her opening year to venture a double bill.

It's in the double bill (Wednesday and Friday 26th) that the rarities are to be found – Vaughan Williams's Riders to the Sea(with Doreen Curran as Maurya and Sarah Power as Cathleen), and Holst's Wandering Scholar. The pair of 20th-century English operas is directed by Ian Walsh, with designs by Fiona Carey, and the conductor is David Brophy. Puccini's La Bohème(Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday 27th) stars Emily Alexander (above) as Mimì and Carthaig Quill as Rodolfo. The production is directed and designed by John McKeown, and the conductor is Roy Holmes.