The Wexford opera train returned for one night only. At €479 a ticket here’s what you got
Champagne, plentiful wine, rich food and the gentle rhythm of the restored carriages on the way to see The Gambler: it’s all dangerously soporific
Wexford Festival Opera
Wexford Festival Opera 2026: Croí na Féile review – Joseph Calleja, Ermonela Jaho, Daniela Barcellona and Giorgi Manoshvili take to the stage
The four singers star in the festival’s Croí na Féile fundraising gala on Saturday night, performing Verdi, Massenet and Rossini
Wexford Festival Opera 2026: The Gambler review – Challenging Prokofiev comes to life in five-star production
Ivan Popovsky directs a strong cast that includes the Irish tenors Gavan Ring and Seán Tester as the Wexford Festival Opera Orchestra plays a blinder
Wexford Festival Opera 2026: L’Equivoco Stravagante review – Maria Barakova is remarkable in a production that hardly misses a trick
Rossini was just 19 when he wrote the soon banned Bizarre Misunderstanding, with its critique of nouveau-riche pretensions and stream of double entendres
Ben Barnes: ‘I would extend the basic income scheme to all professionally trained working artists’
Theatre and opera director on his new book, Side Stage: Theatre Writing 1984-2025; his wariness of celebrity actors; and his admiration for John Cleese
Wexford Festival Opera 2026: Iris review – Rosetta Cucchi directs a sterling cast, but Mascagni’s music lets them down
The Chinese soprano Leyla Gu, a forthright Iris, is the audience favourite, judging by the applause on opening night
‘The driver talked all the time for the three-hour journey. I understood maybe 20%’
Rosetta Cucchi, Wexford Festival Opera’s artistic director, on discovering Irish hospitality, revisiting past works for the event’s 75th anniversary and letting the public choose what to perform
Event guide: Angine de Poitrine, Gilbert O’Sullivan and the other best things to see in Ireland in the week ahead
October 10th-16th highlights: Our pick of music, art, theatre and more coming your way
Primavera director Damiano Michieletto: ‘Wexford is in my heart. It’s an important part of my story’
Crafting a film, he notes, is an adjacent but separate skill set from staging opera
‘My mother found love letters written to my father by another man when pregnant with her fourth child’
The novelist’s new book Love Lane explores the crisis brought upon his parents’ marriage when his mother discovers love letters written to his father by another man
More than 80 Irish festivals to watch out for in 2026
Here’s our round-up of cultural showcases to catch this year, from TradFest and Electric Picnic to West Cork Literary Festival and more
Delius’s The Magic Fountain, at Wexford, is unlikely to appeal to many beyond the already converted
Wexford Festival Opera 2025: Singers cope valiantly with composer’s awkward, meandering vocal lines
Handel’s fascinating, neglected Deidamia, at Wexford, features virtuoso performances
Wexford Festival Opera 2025: Bruno de Sá reaches heights few male singers can aspire to
Le Trouvère opera is strongly cast but struggles to convey the tensions of Verdi’s story
Wexford Festival Opera 2025: Ben Barnes directs the French-language version of Il Trovatore
Michael Dervan on how opera composer Gioachino Rossini and Ireland are intertwined
From Dublin’s Theatre Royal in 1829 to Wexford’s modern stages, the Italian’s spirit remains woven into Irish operatic history
What does it mean to be a fallen woman?
In my new poetry collection I reclaim tragic heroines, or at least imagine a different ending to their stories
The Guide: Wexford Festival Opera, Greg Davies and more must-do events in the week ahead
Billy Strings in Dublin, 100 years of New Yorker’s Irish writers, Kerry International Film Festival and more
Wexford Festival Opera: ‘It’s a shining beacon. The main companies do not do obscure repertoire at the moment’
Directors Ben Barnes, George Petrou and Christopher Luscombe on the chance to bring lesser-spotted operas Le Trouvère, Deidamia and The Magic Fountain to the stage
Garry Hynes: ‘My wife was taken from me in the blink of an eye. My whole life’s changed’
The Druid founder has a reputation as a demanding director. But she has mellowed – and theatre is a consolation after her wife was ‘taken from me in the blink of an eye’
Festivals in Ireland 2025: From Longitude to All Together Now – a guide to 80 of the best
From Brigit and Dublin Lunar New Year to Culture Night, Space Week and Cork Jazz Festival, here’s our round-up of cultural showcases to catch this year
Abbey Theatre gets €9.5m in strategic funding from Arts Council, €1m more than last year
Almost €60 million spread across nationwide arts bodies
Le Convenienze ed Inconvenienze Teatrali at Wexford Festival Opera 2024: A feast of feuds, rivalries and enmities
Paolo Bordogna nails the role of Mamma Agata, the manipulative helicopter mother in Donizetti’s drama of backstage power struggles
The Critic at Wexford Festival Opera 2024: Outstanding Charles Villiers Stanford revival doesn’t miss a trick
Conor Hanratty’s production treats the composer with all the loving care that he himself had first bestowed on Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play
Le Maschere at Wexford Festival Opera 2024: Brave effort to animate Mascagni’s hugely problematic work doesn’t really come off
Italian operagoers were unimpressed when Le Maschere premiered in 1901. It remains textually and musically verbose with little grip of character or plot
Wexford Festival Opera 2024: ‘The singers are glad they don’t have to talk much. And the actors are delighted they don’t have to sing’
Director Conor Hanratty on the challenges of bringing two sets of performers together in a doubly Dublin opera
The Guide: Ruby Wax, St Vincent, Crowded House and other events to see, shows to book and ones to catch before they end
October 12th-18th, 2024: The best movies, music, art and more coming your way this week
The Guide: The events to see, the shows to book, and the ones to catch before they end
The best movies, music, art and more coming your way between Saturday, October 28th, and Friday, November 3rd, 2023
La Ciociara review: The audience roars its approval as the curtain falls on this seat-shiftingly vivid opera
Wexford Festival Opera 2023: If you want to hear what a Puccini of the 21st century might have sounded like, this is as good a starting point as any
Andrea Gilligan might not pose the toughest questions, but she knows how to dodge a bullet
Radio: The Lunchtime Live host opts for friendly inquiry rather than wilful baiting, but she needs to stay alert all the same
L’Aube Rouge review: One of those unfortunate works in which problems stand out more clearly than strengths
Wexford Festival Opera 2023: Strong singing and the orchestra playing a blinder can’t mask the disjointedness
Zoraida di Granata review: This early Donizetti, performed in its original form for the first time, is quite an engaging ride
Wexford Festival Opera 2023: An impressively unwavering Claudia Boyle sings the title role, with Matteo Mezzaro as Abenamet and Konu Kim as Almuzir
The Guide: The events to see, the shows to book, and the ones to catch before they end
The best movies, music, art and more coming your way October 21st-27th
Irish soprano Claudia Boyle on a ‘platform to celebrate what a woman is, what a woman can be’
Wexford Festival Opera 2023: The singers Claudia Boyle, Andreea Soare and Na’ama Goldman on this year’s theme of Women and War
What do artists need to be creative? From time and space to hope, six tell us what makes them tick
Half a dozen figures from the arts world reveal what they require to realise their full potential as creators
Crosswords & Puzzles
Crosswords & puzzles to keep you challenged and entertained
Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
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