At Wednesday's lunch in the Guinness brewery to announce details of the immensely popular Wexford Festival Opera in the autumn, one joke ran through the proceedings. Minister of State, Eamon O'Cuiv, represented the Department for the Arts, as Sile de Valera was rather occupied in the Dail. He set the ball rolling by admitting that at 46 years of age, he was exactly one year younger than the festival itself.
It was a gauntlet that seemed impossible to refuse - the new chairman of the festival, Ted Howlin, then Pat Barry of Guinness, and finally Luigi Ferrari, the festival's artistic director, all in turn revealed their own ages until the confessional atmosphere reached a level of which Oprah Winfrey would have been proud. All in all, Jerome Hynes, chief executive of the festival, must have been rather pleased that he was not called upon to speak.
Luigi Ferrari had other revelations, of a more operatic nature, up his sleeve. The festival will offer two 20th-century operas: Pavel Haas's Sarlatan and Riccardo Zandonai's I Cavalieri Di Ekebu, as well as one from the last century, Carlos Gomes's Fosca. This, Luigi assured us, was part of the festival's new policy of "gentle agression - just like a washing powder"; a policy that will re-introduce Irish audiences to operatic works of this century.
After the speeches, everybody trooped in for lunch and gossip about the highlights of the festival. Doreen Curran, the mezzo soprano who is the current RTE Singer of the Future, is certainly looking forward to the autumn festival as she is taking the part of Mercedes in Carmen, which will be performed as part of the programme of operatic scenes. Irish soprano Elizabeth Woods, who will perform in Die Fledermaus, also joined the party.
There was a clutch of diplomats there including Michael Phillips, Canadian ambassador, and Ferdinando Zezza, the Italian ambassador who was accompanied by the director of the Italian cultural institute, Laura Olivetti. Other people there to start the 1998 Wexford Festival Opera ball rolling were Muriel McCarthy, curator of Marsh's Library, whose sister Mairead Furlong has an antiques business in Wexford and is very involved with the festival; Kevin Healy, the director of public affairs in RTE, who had news of a new director of music at RTE - Niall Doyle, previously of Music Network; Paddy McElwee, who laughed that his cheery red jumper was a celebration of his recent retirement as manager of the National Symphony Orchestra, and the Mayor of Wexford, Eddie O'Connor.
