Irish soprano Claudia Boyle on a ‘platform to celebrate what a woman is, what a woman can be’

The theme of Wexford Festival Opera this year is Women and War. It’s not that unusual for opera to feature women in a time of war. But two of the works take angles you might not expect to find on the opera stage.

L’Aube Rouge (The Red Dawn), by Camille Erlanger, which was first performed in 1911 in the French city of Rouen, follows a group of nihilists as they travel from St Petersburg to the French Riviera and on to Paris before making their way back to Russia. There is, of course, a love angle. Olga, an aristocrat who has joined the cause, is also in love with the group’s leader. And both die at the end, but not before he has planted a bomb.

The Romanian soprano Andreea Soare says she found the subject matter “a little bit tricky”, given the war Russia is waging today. “When Wexford first asked me, I thought it was a really delicate thing to speak about and to make it happen.”

The music, she says, “is just amazing. I don’t understand why this opera is not done more often in France, or elsewhere. It’s like Puccini, the same flow and the same musicality and the same kind of lines for the voice.” Erlanger (1863-1919) is one of the most obscure composers featured at Wexford, a festival that specialises in neglected repertoire. I could trace only two mentions of him in the Irish Times archive, one a passing reference in an 1898 review of the premiere of Paul Vidal’s La Burgonde in Paris, the other a 1904 report about a libel action he was taking against a French music journal.

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La Ciociara, by Marco Tutino (born 1954), is based on Vittorio De Sica’s 1960 film, known in English as Two Women, which is itself based on the 1957 novel by Alberto Moravia. The Israeli mezzo-soprano Na’ama Goldman says, “The story of Cesira, my role, and her daughter, the two women, is based on the extraordinary movie with Sophia Loren. It’s my dream that she will come to the first night.” The story is set during the second World War, when Italy “was literally a huge mess of all possible forces, from all sides. There were the Nazis, and the Allies had already started conquering slowly, from south to north.”

The two women have nobody else. “There is no father, there is no husband, it’s just the two of them. They are in Rome. They have to survive the harsh days of women staying at home. They’re running a shop. Money is tight. Food is difficult. They have to survive the bombing of Rome. The daughter is freaking out. And Cesira decides that, okay, it’s time to go back to the countryside where she was born, and seek some peace and quiet.”

The hardships they experience, Goldman says, include “a lot of confrontations with men, based on true stories of course, including being raped, both of them. It’s a very, very challenging plot, which I actually love to take on. And in the end, I think, the most important message of the opera, of the story, is how do you go on from this total destruction? No reason to live. The world has gone mad. Everything is so brutal, ugly, and any other negative thing you can think of is going on. The opera is saying, yeah, we have to continue. We must have hope. It’s a very strong message, relevant for our own day, as well. The most important thing to understand is that there are no winners in war.”

Tutino’s opera was first performed in San Francisco in 2015; at Wexford it’s being heard in a revised orchestration. Goldman says the music is “not atonal or anything. We’re talking about a contemporary, living composer. Which I think is a real privilege. It’s beautiful. It has its own kind of realm or world of sound. But it’s tonal, and you can still feel that it’s contemporary. It has some Puccini influences in it. It’s super interesting, I have to say.

“I have amazing arias that I absolutely love. It’s definitely a very good example of how opera, contemporary opera can still evolve. It made me think a lot about how many times people have declared, Oh, opera is dead. No. It’s not dead. And definitely we have to keep it alive by continuing to write more operas. This is a perfect example of a really good contemporary opera that continues to evolve the genre.”

There’s real tension between these three characters. Obviously, to go with all that, there is Donizetti’s beautiful music. It’s difficult music, I have to say. It’s hard

—  Claudia Boyle on Donizetti's opera Zoraida di Granata

Gaetano Donizetti, the most-performed composer in the history of the festival, was 24 when Zoraida di Granata (Zoraida of Granada), his fifth opera, brought him the greatest success of his career thus far.

“I’m surprised it’s not more well known,” says the Irish soprano Claudia Boyle, who sings the title role. “It’s certainly not like his L’Elisir d’Amore or Lucia di Lammermoor. But there’s wonderful music in it.” It is, she says, “your typical kind of opera plot, with a love triangle in it,” someone powerful who lusts after Zoraida while she is in love with someone else.

“There’s real tension between these three characters, and it certainly lays the ground for your typical, exciting opera plot. Obviously, to go with all that, there is Donizetti’s beautiful music. It’s difficult music, I have to say. It’s hard.”

Donizetti (1797-1848) “was really looking at all the types of coloratura that he’d like to use in future operas, and trying everything out”, says Boyle. “You can definitely hear huge influences of Rossini in there as well. I like that. I like when music is challenging. I do like when a plot is challenging as well. How do you make what is maybe looked on as a surreal kind of plot and situation ... how to you make that real? How do you make it natural? The character of Zoraida is very strong. She’s very, very faithful, loyal, honourable. It’s a platform to celebrate what a woman is, what a woman can be,” Boyle says.

“I think every day is a kind of war for a woman. I’ve just been bathing my two children. I’m up in Dublin. I’m going to leave for Wexford in 45 minutes and just make it in time for the rehearsal. It completely relates to that theme. There is a war in this opera,” she says, referring to a Spanish attack on Moorish Granada. “It’s very relatable. But also on other levels, as well, on social levels, emotional levels, it really does highlight what a woman goes through.”

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Goldman’s experience is quite different. “I’m Israeli, so, unfortunately, war is a little bit too familiar,” she says (talking before Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel this weekend), “and I think war looks and evolves differently over time. I don’t think it’s relevant to compare, but I think the most important thing to understand is that there are no winners in war. I think that’s also the big message of La Ciociara. Through the women who stayed at home and had to survive you understand that. Of course you have the soldiers, the men who are fighting, and they suffer for it. But the ones who stay behind suffer in a totally different way.

“I have to add that for me, specifically, being Israeli and Jewish, speaking about the second World War, I know it from a very different side, the Holocaust, personally, through all the family stories and stuff. I find it really, really fascinating to do a character in the same war but with a completely different story. And, again, to see how many sides, and how many stories you can have for the same war. As many people as we have, that’s the number of stories that we have. And everybody loses. Everybody.”

Soare says, “I’m from Romania, so I don’t know war personally. I’ve lived in Paris for 10 years. The night of the attack in Bataclan, I was supposed to be there with one of my friends. I had a ticket to go. But, by chance, I wasn’t feeling well, so I just stayed at home. My pianist went there, alone. He didn’t get hurt, let alone anything worse. It was a very traumatic experience, even though I wasn’t there. Just knowing I was supposed to be there. I just escaped by chance. It was really a blessing.”

Boyle sees herself as “fortunate to be quite sheltered. I’ve had no direct contact with war. I remember having a holiday after the terrorist attack in Nice. I was there a couple of weeks afterwards. Just walking along the promenade, it was all so fresh. Seeing loads of flowers there ... As Na’ama said, there’s no winners. There’s just losers all around. Profoundly sad.”

Wexford Festival Opera runs from Tuesday, October 24th, to Sunday, November 5th. As part of the festival’s Women and War theme, Michael Dervan does an “Impossible Interview” with Florence Nightingale, played by Olga Conway, on Tuesday, October 31st