Operatic ambitions in Glasthule

ON A SUMMER’S evening, with the sea a blue smudge at the edge of a blue sky, Glasthule is undeniably a pleasant spot. But does the name of this south Dublin village have an operatic ring? Anne-Marie O’Sullivan reckons it does, which is why she has set up Glasthule Opera.

“I was looking out the window one day,” she says, “and I looked over at St Paul’s church across the road. And out of nowhere I just thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely to have an opera festival around here?’ I thought, ‘We’ll have the opera in the church hall, and we’ll have the picnic in my back garden’.” Of course the idea didn’t really come out of nowhere. It came from a lifetime of training young singers – O’Sullivan is head of vocal, opera and drama studies at the DIT Conservatory of Music – and of attending opera festivals in unusual places, from Wexford to Glyndebourne, Buxton to the Isle of Man.

Having dreamed about her idea for many years, last summer O’Sullivan made a start by organising a gala concert at the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire. “And people liked it,” she says. “People who wouldn’t normally go to the opera. So I took a giant step for this year – not realising that the recession would hit in the meantime.”

Recession or no, the DLR Glasthule Opera Festival will make its debut at the Pavilion next week, combining Puccini's perennially popular La Bohèmewith an adventurous double bill of Gustav Holst's The Wandering Scholarand Ralph Vaughan Williams's Riders to the Sea. "I chose Bohèmebecause people go to Bohème," says O'Sullivan. "And I love it, of course. I also have the singers. There's a young girl called Emily Alexander who graduated from DIT two years ago and who has been studying in Italy since – in Lucca, Puccini's birthplace, and in Milan."

Alexander sang the role of Musetta in front of Puccini’s grand-daughter last September, prompting the comment that she was just the kind of Musetta her grandfather would have wanted. For Glasthule Opera she will take the role of Mimi.

Riders to the Seawas also something of an obvious choice. "This year is a Synge year, and Synge lived in Glasthule for about 10 years of his life," says O'Sullivan. "The score for Ridersis magnificent; I think Vaughan Williams thought he was Wagner sometimes. To balance that, I chose The Wandering Scholar, which is based on the stories of the writer Helen Waddell from Co Down. It's a French farce set in medieval times, sort of slapstick, which makes it a good foil to the tragedy of Riders. It's a risk, because these pieces are not well known. But I don't want to be just doing potboilers. I want the festival to be serious enough that there's some kind of a learning curve – an introduction to new things."

Putting on these lesser-known operas has its downside. The rights to The Wandering Scholarare very expensive; Riders to the Sea, meanwhile, demands an orchestra of 20 players, which is a tough call on a tight budget. O'Sullivan succeeded in getting funding from Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, but not as much as she had hoped for. "The money situation is difficult," she admits. "There's an awful lot of goodwill involved – friends and colleagues who are doing it for the love of opera."

But all those years of mounting productions on a shoestring at DIT have, she insists, taught her a trick or two. “I’m good at managing money, and I have to be – you have to be careful. There won’t be much in the line of sets – there’ll just be suggestions of sets, really – but there will be lighting and costumes.”

She has enlisted the services of the conductors Roy Holmes and David Brophy, for Bohèmeand the double bill respectively, and she is confident her singers are top-notch.

“They’re all young singers and they’re like any third-level students,” she explains. “They go to the gym, they wear mad clothes, they do all of that. And I think that appeals to audiences because people can relate to it.”

The productions will – she hopes – pack the punch of the fully-fledged opera experience. “I think it’s a very special thing for people to have a close encounter with the human voice that’s not being magnified or enhanced in any way.”

Among the voices on offer will be those of baritone John Molloy as Colline in Bohème, Doreen Cullen as Maurya in Riders to the Seaand tenor Carthaigh Quill as Rodolfo in La Bohème. Meanwhile, for the famous Cafe Momus scene in Act Two of La Bohème, the cast will be joined by the children of the Harold School in Glasthule village.

For O’Sullivan, this provides not only a link to the immediate environment but also to her own family. “My father and six brothers were baptised in the church in Glasthule and they went to the Harold School,” she says. “And people around here are delighted by the idea of an opera festival. I mean, Glasthule village is now very popular and fashionable – but it didn’t used to be. It was just an ordinary little Dublin village. My father’s uncle, Dinny O’Sullivan, had the dairy down at the corner where the motor shop is now.” It sounds like an opera in itself. And who knows? If the weather keeps up, she may even get her picnic in the back garden.

La Bohème

is at the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire on June 23, 25 and 27. The double bill of

Riders to the Sea

and

The Wandering Scholar

is on June 24 and 26. All performances begin at 8pm