Today-Sat Nov 5. wexfordopera.com 1850-467372
METAMORPHOSES
St Peter’s Church of Ireland, Drogheda Tomorrow 8pm 15 01-8721122
MUSIC CURRENT
Project Arts Centre, Dublin Sat/Sun 01-8819613
ORPHEUS IN THE UNDERWORLD
Great Hall, Downshire Estate, Downpatrick, Co Down Thurs 8pm £15 048-44612233
Wexford Festival Opera runs for 15 nights this year, but with only 12 performances of the main operas, the festival is giving a miss to days on which demand for seats is traditionally light. Wexford audiences are rarely in doubt about what they like best – Italian fare – and there aren't many seats left for any of the performances of Donizetti's Gianni di Parigi, with Edgardo Rocha in the title role. You'll have a better chance with Thomas's La cour de Célimène, where Irish soprano Claudia Boyle (left) is the amorously controlling Countess. And your best chance is with the least- known of this year's three works, Roman Statkowski's Maria (a work that's obscure even in the composer's native Poland), with Daria Masiero in the title role.
Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh is probably best known through the Kronos Quartet's recording of her Mugam-Sajahy. She's in Ireland on Saturday, playing piano in Drogheda at a Louth Contemporary Music Society concert called Metamorphoses,which also features the cello ensemble Celli Monighetti. The programme also includes works by Alexander Knaifel, Dimitri Yanov-Yanovsky, and Sofia Gubaidulina.
Saturday and Sunday sees Austrian composer Karlheinz Essl, a leader in the field of computer music, in concerts and giving a real-time composition workshop at Dublin's Project Arts Centre in a project called Music Current.And the opening night of NI Opera's touring production of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, directed by Oliver Mears and featuring a new translation by Rory Bremner that brings the political references of the work fully into the 21st century, takes place in Downpatrick on Thursday. The premiere of this co-production with Scottish Opera was enthusiastically received in Glasgow.
