Mascagni – Le Maschere

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Ioana Constantin Pipelea, Lavinia Bini, Andrew Morstein in Le maschere, by Pietro Mascagni. Libretto by Luigi Illicia as part of Wexford Festival Opera 2024  | Credit: Patricio Cassinoni

Situated in a delightful small town on the southeast coast of Ireland that boasts a top-quality modern opera house, the Wexford Festival specialises in rarities. This year the event opened with Pietro Mascagni’s Le maschere (The Masks) – a piece about as far as one could ever get from the rural tragedy of Cavalleria rusticana, his first and greatest success.

Throughout his career Mascagni sought to diversify his dramatic and musical styles. Le maschere (1901, revised 1931) revived the ancient art of commedia dell’ arte, which lies at the heart of innumerable 18^th-century comic operas as well as plays and indeed other forms of comedy.

At the beginning impresario Giocadio (actor Peter McCamley) interrupted the overture to introduce the singing characters: Pantalone (Mariano Orozco), Rosaura (Lavinia Bini), Florindo (Andrew Morstein), Dr Graziano (Rory Musgrave), Colombina (Ioana Constantin Pipelea), Brighella (Gillen Munguia), Captain Spavento (Matteo Mancini), Arlecchino (Benoit Joseph Meier) and Tartaglia (Giorgio Caoduro).

A cumbersome plot involving a magic powder essentially boiled down to forestalling Pantalone’s scheme to marry his daughter Rosaura to the braggart and bully Captain Spavento when she wants to marry clever Florindo instead: young love, of course, wins through.

At the opening, the characters wore their traditional commedia costumes (designer and director: Stefano Ricci), but they soon changed into contemporary clothes for the main action, which took place in a modern health spa.

Ricci kept things light and entertaining, but it was the music that captivated under the fluent command of conductor Francesco Cilluffo who consistently highlighted the genuine appeal of Mascagni’s score. Impressive work from the chorus and orchestra here and throughout the festival.

Stanford – The Critic

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The cast of Stanford's The Critic at Wexford Opera Festival | Credit: Patricio Cassinoni

The name of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford is not immediately associated with opera, but in fact he wrote ten of them, of which The Critic, or An Opera Rehearsed, based on a comedy by Sheridan, was the ninth, launched at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London in 1916.

Wexford’s revival proved it to be an unfailingly clever piece of work that deserves to be better known.

Designed by John Comiskey (sets) and Massimo Carlotto (costumes), Conor Hanratty’s production played the second of the three comedies forming this year’s mainstage programme to the hilt, revealing that Stanford indeed had a sense of humour, well deployed here in terms of musical parody – in this instance regularly of the music dramas of Richard Wagner.

In Sheridan’s original, the play being rehearsed takes as its patriotic subject the defeat of the Spanish Armada. In Stanford’s version (for which L. Cairns James reworked the text) this becomes an operatic version of the same tale.

Spoken dialogue is used, perhaps in too generous a portion in the opening scene at the theatre where actors playing the roles of composer Mr Dangle (Jonathan White), librettist and impresario Mr Puff (Mark Lambert) and the celebrated critic Mr Sneer (Arthur Riordan) comment on the opera’s final rehearsal.

The sets – notably the interior of the theatre where the rehearsal takes place, but especially the sea battle between the English and the Spanish fleets – were brilliantly devised, with Carlotto’s costumes equally fitting the comic bill nicely.

The large cast clearly enjoyed their roles almost as much as the audience: strong leads were offered by Ben McAteer’s Sir Walter Raleigh, Gyula Nagy’s Earl of Leicester, Ava Dodd’s Tilburina – daughter of the governor of Tilbury Fort – and the grandly named Don Ferolo Whiskerandos, son of the Spanish admiral and sung by Dane Suarez.

Conductor Ciarán McAuley conveyed the strengths of Stanford’s score, matching neatly the humour conveyed in Hanratty’s finely crafted production.

Donizetti – Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali

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Miryam Tomé, Andrea Carozzi, Paolo Bordogna, Charles Riddiford, Andrea Carlotta Pelaia in Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali by Gaetano Donizetti | Credit: Patricio Cassinoni

The title of Donizetti’s comedy is something of a mouthful in any language: one might literally translate it is as Theatrical Conventions and Complications, or more familiarly as The Opera That Goes Wrong.

It began life as a one-act farsa in Naples in 1827; four years later, the composer expanded it into a two-act dramma giocoso.

Both versions explore the same situation in which an opera company, assembled in the Italian provinces, tries to put on the opera seria, Romolo ed Ersilia despite the fact that the cast is at loggerheads, especially following the arrival of the mother of the seconda donna (chief rival, of course, to the prima donna), Mamm’ Agata. This is a part played in the original productions as well as at Wexford by a bass-baritone specialising in buffo roles -- in this instance the celebrated Paolo Bordogna.

A genuine star performer, he sings all the standard roles for his voice type and here tackled one which required him to cross-dress and play a female character: the monstrous theatrical mother who takes over the show and largely destroys it. His portrayal – including his mangling of the once celebrated Willow Song from Rossini’s Otello – was a pure masterpiece of comedy.

But then so was the entire production by director Orpha Phelan, collaborating with    designer Madeleine Boyd and choreographer Amy Share-Kissiov.

There were various interpolations, including a hilarious ballet that drew on the overture to a real opera seria of the title Romolo ed Ersilia by Czech composer Josef Mysliveček, premiered in Naples in 1773; and of all things ‘Glitter and Be Gay’ from Bernstein’s Candide, flawlessly sung by Sharleen Joynt as the  prima donna herself.

With fine singing from other cast members – Giuseppe Toia, Matteo Loi, Paolo Leoci and Alberto Robert stood out – and unstoppable musical momentum under conductor Danila Grassi, the result was the hit of the festival.

Albert Caruso – Lady Gregory in America

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Gabriel Seawright, Cathal McCabe and Davide Zaccherini in Lady Gregory in America | Credit: Patricio Cassinoni

There were other operas of offer in Wexford, including a new work with a libretto by leading novelist Colm Tóibín, born in County Wexford in 1955 and an opera lover. Following last year’s fascinating exploration of the private life of Henry James in The Master, this year he collaborated once more with the Italian composer Alberto Caruso on Lady Gregory in America, a colourful account of the fraught first stagings in America in 1911 of the now classic Irish play by J. M. Synge in which the determined Lady Gregory’s loyal support eventually wins the day for the play.

It's a fascinating story from literary history and unsurprisingly the libretto tended to overshadow the score, written for piano and played with fluent virtuosity by Caruso himself.

Aiofe Spillane-Hinks delivered a lively production to Lisa Krugel’s set and costumes, with standout performances from Erin Fflur (Lady Gregory), Jane Burnell (Molly Allgood), Henry Strutt (J.M. Kerrigan) and Bríd Ní Gruagháin (Mrs Kerrigan).

wexfordopera.com