`Major dollops of opera." That's how Sean Lynch of the Mullingar Arts Centre describes Opera Theatre Company's first touring opera festival. The OTC truck will rack up considerable mileage as it hauls two shows - the new production of The Beggar's Opera and a revival of Peter Maxwell Davies's The Lighthouse, directed by Brian Brady - and a range of fringe events around a total of 10 venues. "In Mullingar, the local choral society starts the ball rolling for a weeklong festival with a performance of Faure's Requiem and Rossini's Stabat Mater with the Dublin Baroque Players," says Lynch. "And besides the two operas on consecutive nights, we have three free lunchtime recitals. On Tuesday, there's a harp and voice concert at the Greville Arms Hotel, then The Drawing Room Opera Company will be at the Harbour Place Shopping Centre on Wednesday, and on Thursday it's a woodwind trio in the Tesco Shopping Centre. And that, as the fella says, completes the voting of the Mullingar jury." Except it doesn't, quite. A major part of the festival will be a three-day schools workshop on opera, in which 12 local schools will participate. "It's great that we have the workshops," says Lynch. "We already do art appreciation workshops for small, two and three-teacher schools in the country and I wanted to do something to tie in with that. The kids will work all day with David Munro, who's coming over from Scotland, and at six o'clock each evening they're going to put on a show for parents and friends. I look forward to that one. "We've had them in for dance workshops, and you get the country guys coming in going, `ugh, I'm not gonna dance' and they go out saying, `God, sure I did that at GAA training . . .'."
The festival begins in The Market Place, Armagh next Friday and Saturday. It then tours to Dublin (O'Reilly Theatre, Belvedere College, February 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th); Dundalk (Town Hall, 13th and 14th); Derry (Rialto Theatre, 16th and 17th); Mullingar (Arts Centre, 20th and 21st); Enniskillen (Ardhowen Theatre, 23rd and 24th); Galway (Town Hall Theatre, 27th and 28th); Tralee (Siamsa Tire, March 2nd and 3rd); Cork (Everyman Theatre, March 6th and 7th); and Kilkenny (Watergate Theatre, March 9th and 10th).
For further details, see: www.operatheatreco.com