A mix of everything: The Celtic Tenors' eclectic repertoire with harmony-driven music sung by classically trained voices

The Celtic Tenors
(George Hutton, Daryl Simpson, Matthew Gilsenan)

The Celtic Tenors is an Irish trio comprising singers Matthew Gilsenan, George Hutton, and Daryl Simpson. Known for their signature harmony-rich style, they blend opera, classical, Irish traditional, and pop influences. The group was founded in 1999 and Matthew Gilsenan is the sole surviving founder member. Their live album The Celtic Tenors: Live at The Empire Theatre is out now on all major streaming platforms. I recently chatted Daryl Simpson to find out more.

Daryl describes their repertoire as 'a mix of everything', though he adds that over the years this has evolved and that in the early days they were more strictly classical crossover with an Irish/Celtic slant. He feels that they are more about harmony-driven music sung by classically trained voices, though they lighten things off for the more pop-influenced numbers. They sing music that inspires and moves them; if it doesn't inspire them then the chances are it won't inspire their audience either.

Their audience largely consists of those aged forty and above, but there are also families with three generations. Daryl points out that this is sometimes off the back of the trio having been in the business 25 years so that they attracted the grandparents first! They were founded in 1999 and Daryl celebrates 20 years with the group in June.

Memories of a County Kerry childhood & a travelling Scot: Stephen McNeff's Ballads of a Bogman & RVW's Songs of Travel at Wigmore Hall for St Patrick's Day

Stephen McNeff: Ballads of a Bogman - The Sigerson Clifford Song Cycle, Vaughan Williams: Songs of Travel; Gavan Ring, Fiachra Garvey; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 17 March 2027

Stephen McNeff's masterly settings of poetry inspired by County Kerry with performers who seemed to identify with the material so that tenor Gavan Ring did not so much perform the songs as embody them

Sigerson Clifford (1913-1985) was an Irish playwright and poet whose most successful work was his 1955 poetry collection, Ballads of a Bogman. Though Clifford worked in Dublin, in the Civil Service, his poetry focuses on the town of Cahersiveen on the Iveragh peninsula of County Kerry on Ireland's southwest coast. The town where Clifford had been born and brought up.

Tenor Gavan Ring was also raised in Cahersiveen,. When in 2021 Ireland's Contemporary Music Centre brought him, pianist Louise Thomas and composer Stephen McNeff together as part of a programme to encourage creative collaboration between musical colleagues, Ring suggested Clifford's poems to McNeff as a source for a song cycle.

The result was Stephen McNeff's Ballads of a Bogman - The Sigerson Clifford Song Cycle from 2022. The cycle was the centrepiece of Gavan Ring and pianist Fiachra Garvey's St Patrick's Day recital at Wigmore Hall on 17 March 2026. The recital's theme was Evocations of Home and Exile, and their programme also included Ralph Vaughan Williams's Song of Travel setting Robert Louis Stevenson.

The plaque, designed by Alan Ryan Hall, commemorating Sigerson Clifford in Cahersiveen, Co. Kerry.

Stephen McNeff's Ballads of a Bogman is a substantial piece, consisting of ten songs in all. Many of Clifford's poems are in the strophic ballad form, and you can clearly hear Irish folk-music and poetry in them. Clifford's focus is on Cahersiveen, but it is not an entirely soft-focus view. In The Ballad of the Tinker's Son the poet contrasts the tinker's life with his own, marooned in an office in Dublin, yet as the ballad progresses the Troubles rear their head, and we learn the poet shot the tinker's son. That is another thing about these poems, they often have a sting in the tail, a twist in the last line. So at the end of The County Mayo with its lyrical evocation of youth, the poet makes clear he is old and looking back, whilst in The Fiddler the poet is another figure who is old and looking back.

Storytelling, musicality & musicology: Hugh Cutting, Peter Whelan & Irish Baroque Orchestra in The Trials of Tenducci at Wigmore Hall

Thomas Gainsborough: Portrait of Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci (c. 1773)
(Photo: The Barber Institute of Fine Arts)

The Trials of Tenducci: Mozart, Johann Christian Bach, Gluck, Thomas Arne, Johann Christian Fischer, Tommaso Giordani; Hugh Cutting, Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 9 March 2026

Irish Baroque Orchestra makes a welcome visit to London with a wonderful evening combining story-telling and virtuosity, exploring music associated with the impecunious Italian castrato Tenducci on his travels in England & Ireland with performances of great presence and bravura

When I interviewed Peter Whelan last year he talked about his interest not only in music but in the stories behind it, [see my interview 'Spurred on by the story-telling'] and this is exemplified by his series of discs with Irish Baroque Orchestra exploring Ireland's 18th century musical heritage by focusing on particular characters. Notable amongst these was their 2021 disc The Trials of Tenducci on Linn Records [see my review] focusing on the Italian castrato, Tenducci who made a career in England and Ireland along with getting himself into one or two scrapes!

On Monday 9 March 2026, Peter Whelan and Irish Baroque Orchestra (IBO) were joined by countertenor Hugh Cutting for a concert version of The Trials of Tenducci at Wigmore Hall. The programme included music that Tenducci had sung, music by composers with whom he was friends and music by contemporaries in Ireland, including pieces by Mozart, Johann Christian Bach, Gluck, Thomas Arne, Johann Christian Fischer and Tommaso Giordani.

Pitting the cello, as lone climber, against the heavens-touching vastness of mountains, Belfast-based composer Anselm McDonnell's new cello concerto premieres in Dublin

Anselm McDonnell

Belfast-based composer Anselm McDonnell appeared on these pages earlier this year with my review of his third album, Politics of the Imagination, featuring music where political commentary and sheer playfulness combine with a serious purpose. Now there is a chance to hear a major new work of his live, when his Cello Concerto No. 1 'Hostile Summits' is premiered by cellist Martin Johnson with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland (NSOI), conductor Ryan McAdams at National Concert Hall, Dublin, on 30 January 2026.

The concerto is a commission from the NSOI. Martin Johnson is a long-time collaborator of Anselm McDonnell's, with Johnson appearing on McDonnell's debut album Light of Shore in 2021 [see my review]. 

McDonnell is a keen hiker and for him the concerto 'explores different aspects of our relationship with mountains, from their might and terrifying beauty to their symbolism as places of divine power'. The work pits the cello, as lone climber, against the 'heavens-touching vastness of mountains, their forbidding majesty', whilst the final movement references Christ's Transfiguration, descending from the heights to heal a sick child.

McDonnell describes the work as having a huge amount of drama in it, along with some unusual uses of the orchestra.

Anselm McDonnell's Cello Concerto No. 1 'Hostile Summits'  is premiered by Martin Johnson, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and Ryan McAdams along with music by Wagner and Tchaikovsky at National Concert Hall, Dublin, on 30 January 2026. Full details from the concert hall's website.    

An ambitious project that seeks to reimagine one of our great literary giants: Alastair White & Gemma A Williams ask how you adapt Finnegan's Wake for the musical stage

 James Joyce began his novel Finnegan's Wake in 1924 publishing it in instalments with the final book only being published in 1939. Joyce's radical reworking of language in the book was initially received with bafflement and open hostility. Its allusive and experimental style has resulted in it having a reputation as one of the most difficult works in literature. 

Now composer Alastair White is planning to adapt Finnegan's Wake for the musical stage. White has very clear intentions when it comes to the project. He seeks to capture the joyful, multidimensional beauty of Joyce’s text. He explains how "central to the adaptation’s approach is a radical re-reading of Finnegans Wake and the modernist canon: that authors such as Joyce, Eliot and Hemingway continue to be misread through romantic and post-modern analyses that sees them as depths rather than surfaces. The project contends that — like the sparse prose of Hills Like White Elephants —  Finnegans Wake has been ill-used by approaches that attempt to 'decode' it through what is absent: in ignorance of the sheer joy that the language embodies. There is no iceberg, no skeleton key; Finnegans Wake is not a cipher. It is only itself." 

As part of Irish Design Week, Alastair White and his creative partner and wife, Tipperary-born curator Gemma A. Williams, will be in residence at the Thomas MacDonagh Museum, Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary, Ireland from 17 to 23 November 2025. The week-long residency, selected as part of Design & Crafts Council Ireland’s flagship initiative, invites audiences to see opera in the making and witness how literature, theatre, fashion and music can intersect and redesign one another.  Education lies at the heart of the open studio, which includes talks, practical workshops and an outreach programme. The residency runs in the heart of Cloughjordan: home of the poet Thomas MacDonagh, whose teacher parents taught in the local school.

Further information from the Design & Crafts Council Ireland website.  

Vivid presence & engagement: Peter Whelan & Irish Baroque Orchestra in Bach's Mass in B minor at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Bach: Mass in B Minor - Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Bach: Mass in B minor; Rachel Redmond, Katie Bray, Hugh Cutting, Anthony Gregory, Matthew Brook, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Peter Whelan; Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
Reviewed 1 November 2025

No novelties, simply a desire to present the music in as compelling and engaged manner as possible with just ten singers and chamber forces

Having seen Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra in action at the BBC Proms and at Wigmore Hall, it was a great joy to be able to catch them on their home turf when, on Saturday 1 November 2025, the performed Bach's Mass in B minor at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin with soloists Rachel Redmond, Katie Bray, Hugh Cutting, Anthony Gregory and Matthew Brook, plus ripieno singers Aisling Kenny, Amy Wood, Laura Lamph, Christopher Bowen and William Gaunt.

Christ Church Cathedral is the elder of Dublin's two medieval cathedrals. Founded in the 11th century and rebuilt in stone in the 12 century, collapse and neglect meant that in the later 19th century George Street was brought in to renovate the building. It is now a handsome mix of surviving medieval and Victorian pastiche, complete with some superb encaustic tiles [see my post on Instagram]. The building was pretty much full for the concert and from my seat in the fourth row the acoustics proved to be surprisingly warm and sympathetic, and chatting to other audience members after the concert their experience was similar.

Like his other great late summation works such as The Art of Fugue, Bach left no clear idea of performance intentions with the Mass in B minor. Certainly, as the admirable article in the programme book by Andrew Johnstone explained, most of the movements are based on pre-existing material. But what did Bach intend? With Bach's passions, musicologists and performers can mine the surviving performance information and debate (usually rather passionately) what was intended, but with the mass performers are more on their own.

Bach: Mass in B Minor - Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Thankfully, Peter Whelan cleaves to the preference for smaller forces. His five soloists were joined by five ripieno singers to create a choir and it was clear we had a vocal ensemble of ten solo singers, not a bland choral blend. They were complemented by an instrumental group of eleven strings, woodwind, trumpets and timpani, plus organ along with harpsichord played by Peter Whelan. In terms of orchestral balance, the organ/harpsichord keyboard contribution felt a little underpowered but that was the only complaint. There were no novelties, simply a desire to present the music in as compelling and engaged manner as possible.

BBC Proms: Rarely has large-scale Handel felt so vital & involving. Peter Whelan & the Irish Baroque Orchestra in the Dublin version of Alexander's Feast

Handel: Alexander's Feast - Hilary Cronin, Stuart Jackson, Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Chorus - BBC Proms (Photo: Chris Christodoulou/ BBC)

Handel: Alexander's Feast (1742 version, modern premiere), Concerti a due cori; Hilary Cronin, Hugh Cutting, Stuart Jackson, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Chorus, Peter Whelan; BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall
Reviewed 30 August 2025

This was unashamedly Big Baroque with the Dublin version of Alexander's Feast where Peter Whelan drew a remarkably communicative and urgent performance from all his players.

Handel's Alexander's Feast tends to be something of an unsung gem amongst his oratorios, perhaps Dryden's text is somewhat too poetically diffuse for modern audiences to take to their heart but in the work Handel displays his masterly grasp of creating large scale structures by interweaving chorus, recitative and aria into something more. He wrote the work in 1736 as a result of a sustained campaign by his friends to get the composer setting some great English poets, a campaign that would lead to Handel's other Dryden and Milton settings.

Until this year, the work had only been performed twice at the BBC Proms, in 1964 and in 2006 (this latter performance in Mozart's re-orchestration). On Saturday 30 August for their first appearance at the BBC Proms (and only the second appearance ever of an ensemble from the Republic of Ireland), Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra chose to perform Handel's 1742 Dublin version of Alexander's Feast along with a selection of his Concerti a due cori. The orchestra was joined by the Irish Baroque Chorus and soloists soprano Hilary Cronin, alto Hugh Cutting and tenor Stuart Jackson.

When Handel visited Dublin in 1741 and 1742 he gave two subscription series which would include the premiere of Messiah and a serenata version of his last opera, Imeneo. He also planned on performing Alexander's Feast but a decree from the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Jonathan Swift, meant that Handel could no longer use the singing men from the cathedral. This meant that Alexander's Feast had to be adjusted. The result is structurally different from the 1736 version, with a third part, using text by Irish writer Newburgh Hamilton who had arranged Dryden's original, and solos rewritten for soprano Christina Avolio, alto Susannah Cibber (who was in Dublin avoiding a sex scandal in London and who made a big impression in the alto solos in Messiah) and tenor Callaghan McCarty who was a Dublin-based theatre singer.

Handel: Alexander's Feast - Irish Baroque Orchestra & Chorus - BBC Proms (Photo: Chris Christodoulou/ BBC)

As Peter Whelan explained to me when we chatted in July [see my interview, Spurred by the story-telling], he designed the performance partly for the Royal Albert Hall and this was certainly Big Baroque. We had a chorus of 40, and orchestra with 30 strings, four oboes, three bassoons and four horns. These latter looked and sounded pretty spectacular with their miles of tubing and highly characterful timbre. The continuo line-up included two harpsichords (one played by Whelan), two theorbos and organ.

Spurred on by the story-telling: conductor Peter Whelan on bringing the Dublin version of Handel's Alexander's Feast to life with the Irish Baroque Orchestra

Peter Whelan conducting Mozart's Symphony No.41 "Jupiter", image taken from video
filmed at the Whyte Recital Hall at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, 9/9/2023. Produced by November Seven Films.

Conductor Peter Whelan is bringing the Irish Baroque Orchestra (IBO), of which he is artistic director, to the BBC Proms this Summer with a performance of Handel's Alexander's Feast. As with their performance of Handel's Messiah at Wigmore Hall in 2023 [see my review], there is an Irish connection, and the ensemble will be exploring the version of Alexanders Feast that Handel produced for his visit to Dublin in 1742. As artistic partner of Irish National Opera, Peter has conducted the IBO in several productions, including two imaginative productions of Vivaldi operas, Bajazet in 2022 [see my review] and L'Olimpiade in 2024 [see my review]. It was recently announced that Peter will be the next artistic director of Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco.

Peter Whelan (Photo: Marco Borggreve)

During an engaging couple of hours that I spent chatting with Peter, we covered a great deal of ground, but what struck me was not just his passion for the music but the way the story behind the music was important to him. He mentions as a child learning about Handel coming to Ireland and being taken with the story, this seems to have sparked an interest not only in music but in the stories behind it.

With IBO, he has produced a striking series of discs in Linn Records exploring Baroque music in Ireland by focusing on the stories of different characters from Irish musical history, illuminating the 18th-century musical life of the country. The most recent is Rachel Baptist: Ireland's Black Syren, and others include Mr Charles the Hungarian: Handel's rival in Dublin, The Trials of Tenducci: A Castrato in Ireland, and Welcome Home Mr Dubourg.

However, we began our chat with Handel's Alexander's Feast. During August, Peter and IBO will be performing this at Kilkenny Arts Festival, Dublin HandelFest, the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, and at Snape Maltings in Aldeburgh as part of Summer at Snape. To a certain extent, the choice of Alexander's Feast for the BBC Proms was pragmatic; each year at the Proms, there is usually a big work by Handel and by Bach, and you need a grand work to fit the space. The performance would also be a chance to recreate the 1742 Dublin version of Alexander's Feast, which has never been performed in modern times. And there is the additional benefit that the piece is about the healing power of music. Peter also proudly points out that the IBO will only be the second group from the Republic of Ireland to perform at the BBC Proms (the previous one was in the 1970s).

Handel wrote Alexander's Feast originally in 1736, setting an adaptation of John Dryden's Ode for St Cecilia's Day (originally set in 1697 by Jeremiah Clarke), but Handel revised the work for subsequent performances and it was one of the scores he took with him to Ireland in 1742 when he was invited there. Peter has been working with the Handel scholar Donald Burrows on the 1742 version, which had very particular circumstances behind it. Handel intended to use the singing men from St Patrick's Cathedral for his performance, but the Dean objected. The Dean at the time was Jonathan Swift, who was beginning to suffer his mental decline and had become somewhat cantankerous. The result was that Swift wrote what Peter calls an amazing letter to Handel announcing that none of the singing men could take part in the performance.

Henning Kraggerud announced as the Irish Chamber Orchestra's new artistic partner

Norwegian violinist and composer Henning Kraggerud is joining the Irish Chamber Orchestra as its new artistic partner from August 2025. Kraggerud joined the orchestra this month for concerts in Ireland presenting Between the Seasons, Vivaldi's The Four Seasons alongside three of Kraggerud's own works. This will be Kraggerud's third tour with the orchestra, in 2022 he joined them for a programme highlighting music from Kraggerud's native Norway and then last year they performed Kraggerud's orchestration of Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Henning Kraggerud is artistic director of the Arctic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra in Tromsø. His recording with them, Between the Seasons featuring Vivaldi and his own compositions came out on Simax in 2018 [see my review]. He is a Professor of Violin and Viola at the Norwegian Academy of Music, where he also teaches improvisation. 

He is also the Chair of Violin and a Fellow at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester. I caught him and the RNCM Chamber Orchestra at RNCM's Original Voices Festival in 2023 including movements from his version of the Goldberg Variations. [see my review]

Further details from the Irish Chamber Orchestra's website.

Inspired by the Sea: composer Ed Bennett on the ideas behind 'Strange Waves', his large-scale immersive work eight-part multitracked cello & field recordings

Kate Ellis performing Ed Bennett's Strange Waves at Cafe Oto with image from Laura Sheeran

Irish composer Ed Bennett has just released a new album, Strange Waves on the Irish label Ergodos. A collaboration with cellist Kate Ellis, Strange Waves includes field recordings, made on the County Down coast and on Ireland’s northernmost island, Rathlin, in the North Atlantic, mixed in with a hypnotic eight-part multitracked cello to create a large-scale immersive work inspired by the sea. 

Earlier this month, Ed Bennett and Kate Ellis launched the album with a performance in London at Cafe Oto, where it was performed with a film by Laura Sheeran that went with the music. Ed's work has featured on this blog before as I reviewed Psychedelia, the 2020 disc of his music on the NMC Records label [see my review].

Ed Bennett (Photo: Rachel McCarthy)

Strange Waves came about partly because of Lockdown in 2020, with Ed wondering whether live performance would ever return and thinking about ways to keep doing things. The idea for Strange Waves was to work with a single performer; having Kate Ellis recording all eight tracks, it was a way to make a piece long distance and create a substantial work with on performer. They recorded it, intending to perform it live when that would be possible. Whilst the performance at Cafe Oto featured just one performer, Kate Ellis, there is an option to perform the work with a live cello octet, though a live version of this remains just a gleam in Ed's eye at the moment. To perform it with eight live performers will take more resources, as the tuning required in the work is quite specific, but Ed feels that surrounding the audience with the eight cellists would be wonderfully effective.

Irish National Opera in Éna Brennan's Breathwork and Gounod's Faust plus much more at the Dublin Theatre Festival

The Dublin Theatre Festival (28 September to 1 October 2023) has as its mission to present a programme of exceptional theatrical experiences that will appeal to the diverse communities and visitors that make up the city. It is Europe’s first theatre festival and still one of the leading ones, presenting the best of international and Irish theatre (also dance and opera). Some of this year's highlights include two pieces from the Irish National Opera, the premiere of Éna Brennan's dystopian chamber-opera Breathwork and a new production of Gounod's warhorse Faust.

Éna Brennan is a Dublin-based composer, arranger, violinist and graphic designer, originally from Brussels. Her most recent commissions include a micro-opera for the Irish National Opera project '20 Shots of Opera' which has led to her participation in INO’s artistic development programme. Her new piece, Breathwork with a libretto by David Pountney is an intimate chamber opera lasting around 20 minutes, a statement of horror and protest in response to the destruction of our environment. It is a companion work to a larger composition Hold Your Breath by Éna Brennan and David Pountney which has been commissioned by Bregenzer Festspiele.

Gounod's Faust will be directed by Jack Furness [who gave a brilliant, poet reimagining to Dvorak's Rusalka at Garsington last year, see my review], so expect something intriguing and striking, and conducted by Elaine Kelly (the company's resident conductor), with American tenor Duke Kim in the title role, and Irish soprano Jennifer Davis as Marguerite.

Elsewhere are the festival Junk Ensemble present Powerful Trouble, Shaune Dunne presents The Solution, a theatrical hybrid mixing dance, theatre and new music, there is a new dance performance for audiences age seven and over from Theatre for Children, whilst Luke Murphy's Volcano blurs the lines of experimental theatre, contemporary dance and psychological sci-fi thriller in live performance made for the Netflix era

Full details from the festival website.

Ulster Touring Opera announces its first staged production

Njabulo Madlala, who makes his role debut as Figaro

Spring 2023 will see Ulster Touring Opera performing its first full staged opera production. Artistic director Dafydd Hall Williams' production of Rossini's The Barber of Seville will be performed at four performances across Northern Ireland and the Republic in February 2023. 

Belfast-born mezzo-soprano Sinéad O’Kelly is Rosina, with South African baritone Njabulo Madlala making his role debut as Figaro, English tenor Jack Roberts [Lensky in Opera Holland Park's 2022 Young Artist performance of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, see my review] as Count Almaviva, Belfast baritone Malachy Frame as Basilio, and Spanish soprano Lorena Paz Nieto [Lisette in IF Opera's recent production of Puccini's La Rondine, see my review] as Berta. The production will be sung in English in Amanda Holden’s beloved translation. The music director is Keith McAlister and the accompaniment will be piano and clarinet.

• Saturday 4 February: Market Place Theatre, Armagh
• Friday 10 February: An Grianán, Letterkenny
• Wednesday 15 February: MAC Belfast
• Friday 17 February: Ramor Theatre, Cavan

Full details from the Ulster Touring Opera website

Tenor Owen Lucas wins NI Opera's 12th Glenarm Festival of Voice

County Tyrone tenor Owen Lucas, winner of the Deborah Voigt Opera Prize (Photo Declan Roughan)

Northern Ireland Opera's Glenarm Festival of Voice took place in Glenarm last weekend, after having relocated to Belfast for the last two years because of the pandemic. On Sunday evening, five opera singers chosen from applicants from across the island of Ireland competed for the Deborah Voigt Opera Prize and to become the NI Opera Young Opera Voice of 2022. The singers spent three days working with top opera coaches Kathryn Harries, Dr Ingrid Surgenor and pianist Simon Lepper.

The winner of the Deborah Voigt Opera Prize and the NI Opera Young Opera Voice of 2022 is County Tyrone tenor Owen Lucas, who was also voted the winner of the Audience Prize, sponsored by The Londonderry Arms, Carnlough. Lucas sang 'E lucevan le stelle' from Puccini's Tosca, and Michael Head's Nocturne, and his ensemble piece was ‘The Midnight Quartet’ from Von Flotow's Martha with David Kennedy, Heather Sammon and Hannah O’Brien.

The winner of the Song Prize, sponsored by The Priests Charitable Trust, is County Louth soprano Hannah O’Brien for her performance of James Joyce’s Bid Adieu for which, unusually James Joyce wrote both the words and the music.

Full details from the Northern Ireland Opera website.

Wexford Festival Opera expands Wexford Factory to include new repetiteur programme

Wexford Festival Opera is expanding its Wexford Factory programme to include repetiteurs. Wexford Factory is the festival's professional academy for young Irish / Ireland-based singers and 15 young singers are taking part in the 2022/23 term. This year, they are being joined by three pianists Aoife Moran, Eléna Maria Esposito and Rebecca Warren, who will take part in the programme over the course of 2 weeks in September, prior to rehearsals for the 71st Wexford Festival Opera in October, at which they will have opportunities to perform.

See my recent interview with the festival's artistic director, Rosetta Cucchi, in which she introduces the 2022 festival and talks about Wexford Factory and its achievements.

Eléna Maria Esposito is an Irish pianist based in Dublin. She has recently completed her degree in piano performance at the TU Dublin Conservatoire, mentored by Siobhán Kilkelly. Aoife Moran is an Irish pianist currently studying on the Repetiteur course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she previously obtained a Master’s degree in piano accompaniment. Rebecca Warren is a pianist and violinist from Wexford currently studying on the repetiteur Master’s programme at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. 

Full details from the Wexford Festival Opera website.

Rediscovered rarities, new opera and young artists: I chat to Rosetta Cucchi, artistic director of Wexford Festival Opera

National Opera House in Wexford (Photo Ger Lawlor.)

Founded in 1951 in Wexford in Ireland (population around 20,000), Wexford Festival Opera has become known for its resurrection of undeservedly neglected and rare operas. The festival is based at the National Opera House which was developed in 2008 on the site of the historic Theatre Royal. This year's Wexford Festival Opera takes as its theme Music and Magic, with three main operas by Fromenthal Halévy, Félicien David and Dvorak along with a selection of pocket operas that range from an Alfred Cellier operetta to a contemporary work inspired by the life of Henry James. 2022 is the second season that artistic director Rosetta Cucchi has planned. She took over for the 2020 season, but the programme of Shakespearean works was postponed to 2021. 

Rosetta Cucchi (Photo Wexford Festival Opera)

Rosetta is, however, not a new face in Wexford, she first started working at the festival as a repetiteur under Luigi Ferrari, ending up as assistant to David Agler (2005-2019), as well as directing several productions such as the 2017 staging of Franco Alfano's Risurrezione. Rosetta was in London recently where she accompanied soprano Ermonela Jaho at one of the festival's international concerts celebrating its 70th anniversary. I was lucky enough to be able to meet up with Rosetta whilst she was in London, to have coffee and chat about this year's festival and how she sees the festival's future.

But we started by talking about the theatre itself. My last visit to Wexford was in the late 1980s, well before the creation of the new theatre. For Rosetta, the current theatre in Wexford is very special indeed, both in terms of its aesthetic and its acoustic. Designed by Keith Williams Architects (with acoustics by Arup), the auditorium uses a great deal of wood and Rosetta describes performing there as being like playing inside a violin. Yet for all its modern aspects, the shape of the theatre is traditional.

Nothing has Changed. Everything has Changed

Under the evocative title, Nothing has Changed. Everything has Changed, Louth Contemporary Music Society (LCMS) returns with its midsummer festival (17 and 18 June 2022) in Dundalk, County Louth in the Republic of Ireland. 

LCMS hasn't been inactive during the last two years, and this year's festival opens with Linda Catlin Smith's Meadow which LCS issued as a recording in 2020 [see my review] and Sam Perkin's Flow, which was also issued as recording. This opening programme will also include the premieres of pieces by Andrew Synnott and Gavin Bryars.

During the day on 18 June 2022 there will be a chance to hear music by Pascal Dusapin and Catherine Lamb, plus Icelandic improvisers Bára Gísladóttir and Skúli Sverrisson. The final concert of the festival is a real treat, the Estonian choir Vox Clamantis will be giving the world premiere of Siobhán Cleary’s Storm in Devon,plus Arvo Pärt’s LCMS commission The Deer’s Cry, music by the Estonian composer Helena Tulve, and Lou Harrison’s Mass for St. Cecilia’s Day.

Full details from the Louth Contemporary Music website.

A unique blend of opera, contemporary orchestral music, street art and animation: The Scorched Earth Trilogy

For The Scorched Earth Trilogy, a trio of new operas by composer Brian Irvine and librettist John McIlduff, creative production company Dumbworld and Irish National Opera are collaborating on three short works that offer a unique blend of opera, contemporary orchestral music, street art and animation, presented as a mapped video and sound installation which have been designed to be experienced in public spaces, with the audio transmitted to wireless headphones.

The three works in the trilogy, Trickledown Economics, Won’t Bring Back the Snow and Revival, will make their debut in Dublin on 25 and 26 March 2022, allowing members of the public to reimagine the spaces where they are being projected. The three works tackle some of the most pressing social, political and human issues we face today, in a radical and challenging way. 

The three pieces each feature a cast of opera singers (and two actors) accompanied by the Irish National Opera Orchestra, conducted by Fergus Sheil (artistic director of Irish National Opera). Librettist John McIlduff directs with designs by Katie Davenport, video design by Conan McIvor and VFX by Enda O'Connor. 

Dumbworld is is an artist led, multi-disciplinary production company that uses opera, animation, orchestral oratorio, arts installation and virtual reality to create contemporary performance art. The company was founded in 2009 by Brian Irvine and John McIlduff.

The Scorched Earth Trilogy by Dumbworld, co-produced by Irish National Opera takes place from 8pm-10.30pm on 25 and 26 March at The Berkeley Library, Trinity College Dublin. Tickets are free but pre-booking via the INO website is essential. And there are plans for the works will tour.

Vividly theatrical: Irish National Opera's production of Vivaldi's Bajazet at Covent Garden

Vivaldi: Bajazet - Gianluca Margheri - Irish National Opera (Photo Kip Carroll)

Vivaldi Bajazet; Gianluca Margheri, Eric Jurenas, James Laing, Niamh O'Sullivan, Claire Booth, Aoife Miskelly, dir: Adele Thomas, Irish Baroque Orchestra, cond: Peter Whelan; Irish National Opera at the Royal Opera House
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 12 February 2022 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)

A vividly theatrical evening as the cast of Irish National Opera's production combine brilliant virtuoso singing with highly theatrical performances

Vivaldi's Bajazet (also known as Il Tamerlano) was premiered at the end of his operatic career, in 1735 in Verona. It is in fact a pasticcio, Vivaldi combining elements from his back catalogue and arias from other composers to create a new work, a sort of greatest hits piece where the arias from other composers were ones principally associated with two of the greatest singers of the day, the soprano castrato Farinelli and the contralto Vittoria Tesi. Its the sort of thing common in musical theatre today, but rare in opera. But Vivaldi was a canny operator and the resulting piece is relatively compact and full of engaging music, showy and designed to appeal, yet with some dramatic moments.

We caught the last night of Irish National Opera's production of Vivaldi's Bajazet at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Theatre on 12 February 2022. The production was directed by Adele Thomas, directed from the harpsichord by Peter Whelan with Gianluca Margheri as Bajazet, James Laing as Tamerlano, Niamh O'Sullivan as Asteria, Eric Jurenas as Andronicus, Claire Booth as Irene and Aoife Miskelly as Idaspe, and the Irish Baroque Orchestra in the pit. Designs were by Molly O'Cathain.

Vivaldi: Bajazet - Aoife Miskelly, James Laing - Irish National Opera (Photo Kip Carroll)

The production (a co-production between Irish National Opera and the Royal Opera House) was something of a little miracle having been planned originally for the period of lockdown. Re-assembling funding and performers to create the production this year was quite an achievement. It opened in Ireland on 16 January 2022, doing a seven date tour before the six performances at the Royal Opera House.

Vivaldi's opera uses Agostino Piovene's libretto which was originally set by Francesco Gasparini in Venice in 1711. In fact Gasparini made two settings of the libretto, the second in 1719 and it was this latter setting which influenced Handel's Tamerlano. [see my review of the recording of Gasparini's 1719 Il Bajazet on Glossa] For Gasparini in 1719, Ippolito Zanella vastly expanded the role of Bajazet in the opera, and this was taken over by Handel. By contrast, Vivaldi's 1735 opera relies on the original 1711 libretto, so the role of Bajazet is more discreet, there is no long, long throne room scene (in Handel, the longest single scene of recitative that he composed) or Bajazet's on-stage death scene, though the outlines of the story are still those familiar from Handel's opera.

It was illuminating seeing the opera in the light of my recent interview with director Dionysios Kyropoulos about applying historical stagecraft to the forthcoming production of Handel's Tamerlano in Cambridge [see my interview], especially as the two productions share the same singer as Tamerlano, James Laing.

A Night at the Opera

Ulster Touring Opera is an ambitious new cross-border company based in Belfast. Under artistic director Dafydd Hall Williams the company has announced its debut season, a concert series A Night at the Opera which is touring during February 2022 to seven venues, three in the Republic and four in Northern Ireland (Newtownabbey, Enniskillen, Omagh, Monaghan, Armagh, Letterkenny, Cavan). 

Four Irish singers, Carolyn Dobbin, Gavan Ring, Amy Ní Fhearraigh and Malachy Frame will be joined by pianist Ruth McGinley and BBC Radio Ulster presenter Marie-Louise Muir for a programme of duets and ensembles by Mozart, Rossini, Verdi and Puccini.

There will also be a chance for audiences to try out the company’s ground-breaking Augmented Reality opera projects in the foyer of the theatres.

Full details from the Ulster Touring Opera website.

From rare Vivaldi to Strauss' Elektra outdoors: Irish National Opera announces its ambitious new season

Giselle Allen takes the title role in Richard Strauss' Elektra with Irish National Opera this Summer

Formed in 2018, Irish National Opera's first two years of operation produced 72 performances of 14 different operas in 24 Irish venues, and then 2020 happened with lockdown coming right in the middle of rehearsals for a new production of Bizet's Carmen. Nothing daunted, the company produced Mozart's Seraglio as an imaginative on-line mini-series, as well as 20 Shots of Opera, 20 short contemporary operas all produced within six months, and much else besides.

Now the company has announced its plans for the coming year, combining filmed productions with both outside and inside performances. The headline news will, inevitably, be the assumption of the title role in Richard Strauss' Elektra by Belfast-born soprano Giselle Allen in a production being staged in August outside in Castle Yard, Kilkenny presented in association with Kilkenny Arts Festival. The production is directed by Conall Morrison, and conducted by Fergus Sheil with a pre-recorded orchestral contribution. The cast also includes Máire Flavin, Imelda Drumm and Tómas Tómasson. Being played outside, one hopes they get good weather and yet Elektra on a warm and balmy evening seems wrong and you feel that constant drizzle and a nasty wind would be more suitable for the subject matter!

There are three films being featured during the year, Edwina Casey's film of Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse, Amanda Feery’s A Thing I Cannot Name, a new filmed opera exploring experiences of female desire, with a libretto by Megan Nolan and Gerald Barry’s comic tour-de-force Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. This latter was originally planned as a live production for last season, but with the cast, sets, costumes and crew all available, the only way to get it done was as a film, with Claudia Boyle in the title role, Hugh O’Conor directs the film of Antony McDonald’s visually ravishing and production. 

The company's first live, indoor offering is Beethoven's Fidelio with Sinéad Campbell Wallace in the title role, Robert Murray as Florestan and James Rutherford as Rocco, in a new production directed by  Annabelle’s Comyn at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin.

As if that wasn't imaginative enough, in January 2022 things get really interesting as the company performs Vivaldi's 1735 pasticcio Bajazet (covering the similar ground to Handel's Tamerlano), directed by Adele Thomas with Italian bass-baritone Gianluca Margheri in the title role and Irish mezzo-soprano Rachel Kelly makes her company debut as Irene, plus James Laing as Tamerlano. Peter Whelan conducts the Irish Baroque Orchestra. The opera tours Ireland in January 2022 and then there is a run at Covent Garden's Linbury Theatre in February 2022. 

Finally, in March 2022 that cancelled production of Carmen comes back, directed by Paul Curran, conducted by Kenneth Montgomery with Paula Murrihy, Dinyar Vania and Celine Byrne. Then in June 2022, mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught is in the title role and Anna Devin is Elisabetta in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, so sparks will be flying at Dublin's Gaiety Theatre and in Wexford and Cork. Tom Creed directs, Fergus Sheil conducts.

There is much else besides, including Elaine Agnew and Jessica Traynor’s new community opera Paper Boat which is a Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture legacy project being presented by Music for Galway, and INO’s first-ever specially-commissioned youth opera Horse Ape Bird by composer David Coonan and writer Dylan Coburn Gray.

Full details from the Irish National Opera's website.