The Blackwater Valley Opera Festival opens next week with an abundance of classical music events over 8 days and nights. With much more on offer than the centrepiece production, the festival has carved out a distinctive niche on the Irish cultural calendar. This year the festival has added extra days and expanded into more venues beyond the base at the Lismore Castle stable yard. There are few better ways to spend a summer evening than wandering through the gorgeous walled gardens of the castle, smelling the roses and relishing the anticipation of an evening of bel canto arias with maybe a flute of Bellini to add a dash of fizz.
Festival director Eamonn Carroll says there are over 100 performers involved in this year’s events. Add in the technical crews; the army of volunteers; the caterers; it is a big operation but Carroll who took over at BVOF in 2019 was not new to such ventures. “My first real engagement with opera was at Wexford. I was thrown in at the deep end with a Russian opera, Snegorochka. It was the first production at the new National Opera House and seeing how it all came together for the first time was fantastic,” says Carroll.
This year’s central production is Macbeth, the first of Guiseppe Verdi’s three operas based on Shakespeare’s plays. A political thriller full of intrigues, murders, and passion, Macbeth is a darker choice than usual for Lismore, partly Carroll says, born out of a wish by the team to try more ambitious works and a reluctance to return to comic operas already presented in Lismore. It is a piece that Dieter Kaegi, artistic director of BVOF knows well having directed a production in 2009 for Opera Ireland.
The recitals are a particularly strong aspect of the festival and there are plenty to choose from in an attractive range of locations that allow a peek behind the hall door of some of the historic houses in the area, not usually open to the public. Song specialist, pianist Niall Kinsella returns to the festival with a programme of songs with connections between the German and Irish art song traditions.
Among them are settings of Goethe by Seoirse Bodley and a song by a former professor of music at UCC. “I was introduced to the Irish language songs of Aloys Fleischmann by the late Cara O’Sullivan. They were an attempt to find an idiom that would express the spirit of Irish folk poetry.”
The festival expects to attract 4,500 visitors to the area and many of the events are sold out. It is, Carroll says, a diverse audience from Ireland and abroad. “We have visitors from Europe and the US. It is extraordinary that this year, we have guests travelling from Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong.”
With the closure of the town’s hotel to tourists in 2016, Carroll acknowledges that accommodation is a challenge but says that they are very resourceful at finding beds for guests in the wider area. Opera is expensive to produce but Carroll is optimistic for the future.
“As our ambitions and visions grow, it will require more investment, but we are well poised now with a stable base to grow. Our challenge is to grow our funding base, to continue to work with the Arts Council and local authorities and to develop our business sponsors and philanthropic donors. We are confident that we can rise to that challenge.”
- Blackwater Valley Opera Festival, May 29-June 5; www.blackwatervalleyopera.ie
Macbeth, Lismore Castle: The first masterpiece of Verdi’s career and a trilogy of Shakespearian titles–. Italian baritones Leonardo Galeazzi and Vittorio Vitelli, alternate as Macbeth; Turkish soprano, Serenad Burcu Uyar sings Lady Macbeth. Croatian bass Goran Juric sings Banquo. Sarah Baxter directs, and Killian Farrell conducts the Irish Chamber Orchestra.
- Ian Bostridge Shakespeare Songs. Dromore Yard: Acclaimed English tenor, Bostridge reprises the songs from his album, Shakespeare Songs released in 2016.
- Irish Songmakers: Liedtreffen, exploring the confluence between German and Irish culture and heritage. Woodhouse Estate; Stradbally
- Blackwater Valley Opera Festival Chorus. Young artists from the 24-strong Festival Chorus step on stage at St Mary’s Collegiate Church Youghal. Hear the rising stars of the future in Ireland’s oldest medieval church.
- Free Shows: Open Air Lunchtime Recitals in Fermoy, Youghal, Lismore and Dungarvan.