Il viaggio a Reims: members of the Wexford Factory dazzle in Rossini's occasional showpiece despite moving the action to an asylum

Rossini: Il viaggio a Reims - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims; Wexford Factory, director Rosetta Cucchi, conductor Manuel Hartinger, Wexford Festival Opera; National Opera House
Reviewed 31 October 2025

A brilliant showcase for the young artists of the Wexford Factory who dazzled and engaged in Rossini's showpiece music, though transferring the action to an insane asylum felt in doubtful taste

Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims was an occasional piece, not so much because of the references to Charles X's coronation in Rheims to which the opera refers, but because the occasion drew forth a cast of 14 distinguished soloists including Giuditta Pasta (for whom Bellini wrote the title roles in La sonnambula and Norma) and Laure Cinti-Damoreau (who would premiere several of Rossini's French operas).

Since the work's modern premiere at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro in 1984, the piece has become more common on stages as something of a party piece, with recent UK performances including at Covent Garden (as a showcase for the Jette Parker Young Artists) and more recently at English Touring Opera [see my review]. These performances demonstrated that the work does have a plot and that it works in situations divorced from the original proceedings.

At this year's Wexford Festival Opera, Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims was chosen as a showcase for the Wexford Factory young artists and to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the work's premiere. The work was performed in an orchestral reduction by the conductor Manuel Hartinger that used around 14 instruments (plus on-stage flute and harp). I caught the final of a series of morning performances at the National Opera House on Friday 31 October 2025. The production was directed by Rosetta Cucchi, the festival's artistic director, with costumes by Massimo Carlotto and lighting by Paolo Bonnapace.

The cast was made up of singers from the Wexford Factory, with five roles being double cast, and from the festival chorus - Maria Matthews, Cerys MacAllister, Laure Aherne, Valeriia Gobunova, Gabe Clarke, Sean Tester, Aqshin Khudaverdiyev, Ihor Mostovoi, Seamus Brady, Tong Guo, Joshua McCullough, Conor Prendeville, Rory Lynch, Meilir Jones and Loughlin Deegan.

Rossini: Il viaggio a Reims - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Perhaps because the performance had originally been planned as a semi-staging, though there was in fact nothing semi about it, Cucchi chose to reject the original scenario and set the opera in an asylum. As Cucchi explains in the programme book, 'a whimsical asylum, where each aristocrat becomes a lovable patient, each with his own delightful obsession'. Whilst she claims that the production is not 'mocking illness' there was something a little uncomfortable about watching these various obsessives.