Opera Scenes Wexford Festival

THE Wexford Festival has a distinguished track record of advocacy of Massenet, and the fourth production of this year's Opera Scenes allowed the festival the luxury of presenting one of his best-known works, Werther.

However, with neither children's chorus (to frame the piece) nor orchestra (to colour in the particular shades of Massenet's sentiment), Werther would seem a particularly precarious undertaking. James Oxley is altogether too stiff as Werther and Daniela Barcellona is an unsympathetically over-pressured Charlotte. As a pair of lovers, this couple never really get started, though they do manage to shift into gear for some of their big moments. Yet, even at the end of the opera it is hard to imagine Oxley's Werther as having the gumption to commit suicide. The liveliest contributions come from the light-weight, doll-like Sophie of Elizabeth Woods and the drunken Schmidt and Johann duo of Neil Allen and David Stephenson.

Director Peter McMahon and his designer, Tamsin Tillier, have created a setting of white gauze curtains, and garbed their singers in period-style costume, but with lighting which left faces unlit at key moments, there is little convincing atmosphere generated. The musical director-accompanist, Alessandro Vitiello, dealt sensitively and resourceful with his uphill task.