Wexford Festival Opera reviews: Don Bucefalo, Silent Night and Salome

4 / 5 stars
Don Bucefalo

DON BUCAFELO is a joyful number drawing on Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Silent Night is a Pulitzer Prize-winning opera with sketchy characters, while Russian baritone Igor Golovatenko shines in Salome

Wexford Festival Opera, review, Don Bucefalo, Silent Night, Salome, Clare CalvinDon Bucefalo: A joyful number drawing on Donizetti’s Don Pasquale[PH]

The 63rd Wexford Festival Opera celebrated its opening night with a flourish of fireworks on the quayside. The small fishing town in south east Ireland draws opera lovers from all over Europe and America each autumn to a Festival that is famed for unearthing neglected rarities then often taken up by others. 

One such could be Antonio Cagnoni’s Don Bucefalo, a joyful number drawing on Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, with a dash of The Elixir of Love thrown in. 

Cagnoni wrote the comedy when he was a student at Milan Conservatory. The tale of a musical con man was an instant hit when premiered in 1847 at Naples. 

Director Kevin Newbury and designer Vita Tzykun update the Italian village setting to a small town community centre in America, where Don Bucefalo, on the run from police, takes refuge. He persuades the locals to take singing lessons from him and appear in an opera he has written. 

The score is conducted by Sergio Alapont, and Italian bass Filippo Fontana brings super-charged energy to the title role. Marie-Eve Munger as would-be diva Rosa and Jennifer Davis as her jealous rival Agata battle for centre stage. 

The Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Silent Night by American composer Kevin Puts received its European premiere at Wexford’s 770-seater opera house. Premiered at Minnesota Opera in 2011, with libretto by Mark Campbell, it is based on the 2005 film Joyeux Noel, about the 1914 Christmas Eve truce during the First World War, seen through the eyes of a Highland Scot, a German and a Frenchman. 

Wexford Festival Opera, review, Don Bucefalo, Silent Night, Salome, Clare CalvinRussian baritone Igor Golovatenko shines in Salome [PH]

Tomer Zvulun, who served three years in the Israeli Army as a medic, directs and designer Erhard Rom’s vertical set is divided into three tiers, representing bunkers of the opposing armies. The sound of bagpipes, as the Scots Guards crack open the whisky, sparks off a response when Prussian Nikolaus Sprink (Chad Johnson) steps out of the German trench, raising a Christmas tree in a gesture of friendship. 

Gradually the enemies come together, led by Alexander Sprague’s Scots guard Jonathan and Matthew Worth’s Lieutenant Audebert of the French forces. Puts’s Britten-influenced score conveys a clear anti-war message but much of the original screenplay has been cut, so the characters are sketchy, and the presence on the battlefield of Sprink’s opera singer fiancee Anna (Sinead Mulhern) is even more incongruous. 

Antoine Mariotte’s Salome, based on Oscar Wilde’s play, draws on the same source as Richard Strauss. The German composer got in first in 1905, and “the other Salome” was delayed until 1908. The orchestra under David Angus gives a well-paced account of the score, but its Debussy-like style can’t compete with Strauss’s blood and guts. 

As Salome, mezzo Na’ama Goldman’s restrained dance of the seven veils seems unlikely to raise the temperature of Scott Wilde’s Herode. Nora Sourouzian is a fiery Herodias and Russian baritone Igor Golovatenko a towering Iokanaan, the opera’s worth seeing just for him.

There are a wide range of Festival fringe events in various venues, including Wexford’s pubs, where some of the singers take part in after-show “craic”. Away from the opera house or concert hall, you can take a spin along the beach, a boat trip past the Wildfowl Reserve, or lunch on the local fishing catch.

Wexford Festival 2014 ends tonight. For information on the 2015 Festival, visit wexfordopera.com

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