LISMORE FESTIVAL:THE FESTIVITIES at the opening of the second Lismore Music Festival on Saturday were blessed by fine weather.
In the pre-performance melee or during the extended interval you could be forgiven for wondering what had brought these hundreds of people together in Co Waterford.
The opportunity to picnic in what are said to be the oldest continually cultivated gardens in Ireland? The chance to soak in the atmosphere of a castle that’s been standing since medieval times, adapting to the misfortunes and changing tastes of the centuries?
Or just an excuse to dress up, open the bubbly, and go to the opera in a spectacular outdoor setting, conveniently sheltered from the elements by a 21st-century marquee that’s still open enough for birds, excited by the music perhaps, to fly in and out from time to time?
It’s an ill wind that blows no good. The demise of Opera Ireland, enforced by the withdrawal of Arts Council support, was already in train last year. And two of the people due to lose their jobs, Dieter Kaegi (Opera Ireland’s artistic director) and Jennifer O’Connell (communications and development manager) wisely set up a small, independent venture, the Lismore Music Festival, with a home base in Lismore Castle.
Kaegi's production of Mozart's Don Giovannihas been updated to the 21st century and relocated to Ireland. This allows what must surely be an operatic first, the sight of the put-upon Masetto attacking the rapacious Don with a hurley.
Kaegi’s often raunchy approach might well have won the approval of the composer, whose letters to his family are notorious for their scatological content. The
Lismore production left the arias in the original Italian, and translated the sung dialogue into racy English.
Sitting in the front row were festival patron and singing teacher Veronica Dunne and tenor Ronan Tynan, a former member of The Irish Tenors, there to see current Irish Tenors member Anthony Kearns as the virtuous, unsullied Don Ottavio.
The Lismore event sold out, and festival director Jennifer O’Connell would love to expand from a weekend to a full week, and also to spread out to other stately properties along the Blackwater.
