Wexford Festival Opera

Wed, Oct 21-Sun, Nov 1 wexfordopera.com 1850-467372

The recession has forced the Wexford Festival Opera, celebrating its second season in its spanking new opera house, to trim its sails: this year’s event will run for just 12 days, and without the popular small-scale daytime productions that were branded ShortWorks.

For the adventurous, this year's programme offers John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles, written to bells- and-whistles scale for the Metropolitan Opera in New York (where it premiered in 1991). It comes to Wexford from the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in a new version that's designed to work in houses with smaller resources.

In the words of Corigliano, it's now got "a more economical production and casting scheme", through which he hopes to "focus the audience on the true nature of the work: that is, that while The Ghostsis, in part, an entertaining buffa, it is also a serious meditation on history and change".

There's also a double bill of Chabrier's Une éducation manquéeand Rossini's La Cambiale di matrimonio(replacing Il Cappello di Paglia di Firenzeby Nino Rota), while Donizetti's Maria Padillawill add to his lead as the composer with the highest number of works produced at the festival.

The programme retains the usual lunchtime and choral concerts, and features a recital by Ukrainian pianist Alexej Gorlatch, who won the Dublin International Piano Competition in May and came second at Leeds in September.

Wexford recently announced some extra concerts for the festival, thematic programmes under the titles Postcard from America, Postcard from Italy and Postcard from Prague.

ULSTER BANK BELFAST FESTIVAL AT QUEEN’S

From today-Sat, Oct 31 048-90971197 www.belfastfestival.com

The awe-inspiring Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Orchestra are back in Belfast for the opening concert of this year’s Ulster Bank Festival at Queen’s.

They offer a mouth-watering programme, coupling Shostakovich's LeningradSymphony with Henri Dutilleux's Correspondances(setting texts by Rainer Maria Rilke, Prithwindra Mukherjee, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vincent van Gogh). The octogenarian composer dedicated it to Dawn Upshaw and Simon Rattle, who gave the premiere in 2003. The soprano soloist in Belfast is Anastasia Kalagina.

The Ulster Orchestra is involved in concerts with poets Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley, a Haydn evening with the BBC Singers, and in a “Polish Passions” programme under Michal Dworzynski. Dutch pianist Ronald Brautigam presents four programmes on fortepiano (solo, in a trio, with a string quartet, and with soprano Mhairi Lawson) at City Hall, where Barry Douglas also appears with his Camerata Ireland orchestra.

John O'Conor will be in the Elmwood Hall for an early evening of Beethoven piano sonatas that includes the Hammerklavier, and at the Grand Opera House there are performances of Mozart's Così fan tutte (in English), and Massenet's Werther from Leeds-based Opera North.