PRESENTING THE FUTURE Irish Youth Opera 1 Irish Youth Opera · Clarinet Conor Sheil | Bassoon Ates Kirkan | French Horn Joseph Ryan | Percussion Noel Eccles | Harp Dianne Marshall

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PRESENTING THE FUTUREIrish Youth Opera

Irish Youth Opera

Irish Youth Opera

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An opera in two acts by Benjamin BrittenLibretto by Ronald Duncan after André Obey’s play Le Viol de Lucrèce

First performed at Glyndebourne 12 July 1946

First performance of this production Wexford Opera House 6 September 2014

Further performances in Cork, Dublin and Dundalk

Performances given by permission of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited


Irish Youth Opera

Irish Youth Opera

Irish Youth Operain association with Wexford Festival Opera

THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA

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THE CREATIvE TEAmConductor Stephen BarlowDirector Michael Barker-CavenDesigner Joe VaněkLighting Designer Sinéad McKennaVideo Adam O’Connell

WExFORd FEsTIvAL OPERA ORCHEsTRAArtistic Director David Agler | Orchestra Contractor & Manager Joe Csibi

Leader Fionnuala Hunt | Violin 2 Siun Milne | Viola Beth McNinch | Cello Gerald Peregrine | Double Bass Joe Csibi | Flute/Piccolo Ríona Ó Duinnín | Cor Anglais Matthew Manning |Clarinet Conor Sheil | Bassoon Ates Kirkan | French Horn Joseph Ryan |Percussion Noel Eccles | Harp Dianne Marshall

Duration: Act 1 – 48 minutes | 20 minute interval | Act 2 – 59 minutes

THE CAsTMale Chorus Ross ScanlonFemale Chorus Jennifer DavisCollatinus, a Roman general Christopher CullJunius, a Roman general Rory MusgravePrince Tarquinius, son of the Etruscan tyrant, Tarquinius Superbus Gyula NagyLucretia, wife of Collatinus Carolyn DobbinBianca, Lucretia’s nurse Raphaela ManganLucia, Lucretia’s maid Emma Nash

Head of Music Philip Mayers | Assistant Conductor Killian Farrell* |Repetiteur Thomas Doyle*, Roy Holmes | Assistant Director James McNulty*| Stage Manager Emma Doyle |ASM Orla Burke | Costume Supervisor Tara Mulvihill |Wardrobe Mistress Mary Kilduff |Hair & make-up Sarah-Jane Murphy |Chief Electrician Eoin McNinch | Production Manager Conor Mullan | Production Coordinator Ray Bingle |

*participant in the IYO mentoring scheme

The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment in the auditorium are forbidden.

Members of the audience are requested to turn off all mobile phones and digital alarms.

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IYO WOULd LIkE TO THAnk THE FOLLOWIngFOR THEIR gEnEROUs sUPPORT: On this exciting occasion for opera in Ireland, I am delighted to welcome

both our recently appointed Minister for the Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Heather Humphreys, and you, our public, to IYO’s opening night in Wexford and to the performances in Cork, Dublin and Dundalk.

The seeds of this venture were sown over the last years and will finally bear fruit in what you will experience in the performances over the next week.

Together with my fellow directors, Dr Suzanne Murphy and Paul McNamara, I would like to thank all sixty-eight singers who came to audition for The Rape of Lucretia in Dublin, Cardiff, London and Berlin – not only is your commitment and ambition the justification for our efforts, it is your extraordinary talent which gives opera in Ireland the possibility of a bright future. We are thrilled and honoured to do all we can to help you on your way.

We would like to express our gratitude to Wexford Festival Opera and the Everyman Cork – your faith, support and input have played a major role in getting the show on the road.

To our major funder, the Irish taxpayer via the Arts Council of Ireland, to all of you at home, in the USA, Great Britain and across Europe, who are committing so generously to the various IYO Circles – to those of you who lent support in-kind – We couldn’t do it without you!

Thank you from all of us at IYO – enjoy the performances!

Colette McGahon Artistic Director, IYO

On behalf of Wexford Festival Opera I am delighted to extend a warm welcome to Irish Youth Opera and its audience on this important occasion.

The Festival has been an enthusiastic partner of IYO from its inception and supported its initial funding application to the Arts Council. We are delighted to work together with this exciting new company which is presenting the best of young Irish artists in this compelling production of Britten’s chamber masterpiece.

I would like to take this opportunity to salute the directors of IYO for taking the initiative in providing this new and much needed professional platform for Irish singers at the start of their careers. I am sure that everyone who is committed to ensuring the continued growth of the highest quality opera production in Ireland will give IYO their full support in this new chapter in Irish operatic history.

I wish Irish Youth Opera a long, invigorating and prosperous life.

David Agler Artistic Director, Wexford Festival Opera Orchestra

WELCOmE

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mInIsTER’s WELCOmEAct One

A Male and Female Chorus recount the story of how the Etruscan Tarquinius Superbus has become the ruler of Rome by corrupt and violent means. His son, Prince Tarquinius Sextus, has been made commander of the Roman army and is now leading them in a campaign of conquest against the Greeks.

It is evening. At a military encampment two Roman officers, Collatinus and Junius, are drinking with Prince Tarquinius and discussing the outcome of a bet they had made the night before. To test the faithfulness of their wives they, along with several other commanders, had returned suddenly to Rome, but only Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, was found to be at home and uncompromised. The ambitious Junius is jealous of Collatinus for Lucretia’s virtue shines greatly upon him. He goads Tarquinius into setting off to Rome to once more test her faithfulness. His ride through the night is described by the male chorus as a mounting frenzy.

Lucretia is at home, accompanied by her servants Bianca and Lucia. She laments her life as a soldier’s wife, full of dry duties and perpetual isolation. Tarquinius arrives and despite misgivings as to the lateness of the hour, is admitted and granted hospitality for the night.

sYnOPsIsAct Two

The Female and Male Chorus tell of the violent and oppressive rule of the much-hated rulers of Rome. The people are tiring of their tyranny and there is talk of revolution.

Creeping into her bedroom, Tarquinius wakens Lucretia and attempts to seduce her. When she refuses his advances he ignores her fervent pleas, raping her before returning alone to camp. The following morning Bianca and Lucia are arranging flowers. Lucretia enters distraught and instructs Lucia to send for her husband. Collatinus anticipates the messenger and arrives unannounced, accompanied by Junius. Lucretia reveals her trauma to all and although her husband absolves her of all blame, Lucretia kills herself. Seizing the opportunity, Junius puts her corpse on public display and incites the populous to rebel against their oppressors, and so seizes power himself.

As the opera closes the Female and Male Chorus desperately seek to attach meaning to the tragedy that has unfolded before them.

Michael Barker-Caven

I would like to extend my warmest wishes to everyone associated with Irish Youth Opera, for this exciting tour of Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia.

Irish Youth Opera is setting very high standards in the performance of opera while providing the next generation of Irish opera singers with invaluable performance opportunities. This tour perfectly illustrates how, with the support of the Arts Council, Wexford Festival Opera and the Everyman Cork, Irish Youth Opera can work together with the four wonderful tour venues to make these performances a reality.

This production of The Rape of Lucretia is sure to intrigue and enthral in equal measure, and I know that the Wexford Opera House, Everyman Theatre, O’Reilly Theatre and An Táin Arts Centre will be packed to the rafters for these performances.

The many hours of hard work, coupled with your commitment and dedication to this wonderful artform, will ensure that it is a night which will live long in the memory for anyone attending.

On this, the occasion of the company’s inaugural production, I offer Irish Youth Opera my warmest wishes for this tour and I wish you continued success in the years ahead.

With best wishes,

Heather Humphreys T.D.Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht

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Peter Grimes, Benjamin Britten’s first major opera, was premiered in London in June 1945, one month after the surrender of Germany and the end of the War in Europe. The work had an immediate and overwhelming impact, and at a stroke it established English opera – which was rarely heard on the international stage – as a force to be reckoned with. In many respects, it is a large-scale opera in the old-fashioned sense: it requires a big cast, including chorus, as well as the resources of a full symphony orchestra; it is rich in theatrical spectacle and dramatic crowd scenes and it provides brilliant bravura roles for the principal singers. Given its success, one might imagine that Britten would have been happy to continue in this vein. Instead, however, the composer unexpectedly set off in another direction altogether and decided to experiment with the virtually unexploited form of chamber opera. Although various theories have been put forward as to why exactly Britten chose this particular creative path, it seems clear that, first and foremost, he was principally guided by his own artistic instinct. We now know

that he had envisioned writing chamber opera as early as 1943, even before the composition of Peter Grimes. Undoubtedly this was bound up with his life-long search for a musical language that was pared down to its absolute essentials. “Music for me is clarification” he once said. “My technique is to tear all the waste away; to achieve perfect clarity of expression....” – and for him the composition of chamber opera was completely consistent with this aim.1 The demands of his own evolving creative imagination also caused him to dismiss impatiently any thought of merely repeating a success. He acknowledged that “some people seem to want another Grimes”, but his reply – “I have different challenges before me and I respond to them.”2 – was completely characteristic. But apart from artistic reasons, there were strong practical reasons, too, for the turn to chamber opera. Britten’s association with Sadler’s Wells – where Peter Grimes had been staged – had not been without its difficulties, and eventually relations soured to the point where he felt it necessary to sever his connection with the opera house altogether. This meant he

had to find alternative means of ensuring the production of future operas, and preferably one that would also allow him the greatest possible degree of personal control. In addition, Britten very much desired to widen the scope of opera and to create works that could be performed independently of the major national institutions whose full resources were required to mount pieces like Peter Grimes. Britten’s vision was of a scaled-down opera – smaller cast, smaller orchestra and simpler staging – that could easily be toured and thus brought to difference centres where opera might not often be seen. We find, therefore, that Britten’s natural artistic inclination was bolstered by a genuine idealism as well as by sound practical and economic reasons.

The idea of basing an opera on the legend of Lucretia was first suggested by Eric Crozier, who had produced Peter Grimes at Sadler’s Wells. For his next operatic project, Britten already had in mind a work based on Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. He had in fact discussed its feasibility with the writer Ronald Duncan, whom he had known for some time and for whose play This Way to the Tomb he composed incidental music in 1945. But Crozier felt that the manner in which the Lucretia story was told in Le Viol de Lucrèce by the French dramatist André Obey was particularly suitable for operatic treatment and he accordingly provided Britten with a copy of the play. Britten was enthusiastic, and dropping all thought of adapting Chaucer in favour of the new idea, he in turn passed it on to Duncan with the request that he fashion it into a suitable libretto. Duncan’s libretto has attracted much unfavourable criticism since the opera’s first production. In part, this is because of its self-conscious wordiness and its occasionally preposterous poeticisms. But it is the manner in which the Male and Female Chorus function as observers of the action – standing outside time as it were – and anachronistically interpret the pagan tragedy from a later Christian standpoint that has drawn the most deeply negative responses. In the opinion

dIFFEREnT CHALLEngEs: The Rape of Lucretia and Benjamin Britten’s idea of Chamber Opera

c1949. At Crag House

photo by roland h

aupt. image reproduced

courtesy of the britten–pears foundation.

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of many critics, this is little more than gratuitous moralising and represents a serious flaw in an otherwise persuasive work of art. It is important to remember, however, that Britten, who was an exacting collaborator, declared himself to be very happy with the libretto. It was exactly what he wanted. He negotiated the flowery language and the occasional verbal infelicities so skilfully that not only are they are scarcely apparent when sung, but Duncan’s words become both memorable and moving in his setting of them. And in Duncan’s defence – if defence is needed – the concluding Christian commentary on the action arose directly out of Britten’s request for additional material – “a final piece beyond the curtain, as it were to frame the entire work” – which he felt he needed to round off the opera musically.3

But Britten’s declared satisfaction with the libretto was undoubtedly because it presented him with a perfectly fashioned dramatic structure for an opera. And in this important respect – whatever one’s reservations about details – it must be judged a success. Duncan kept many of the features of Obey’s play, the most significant of which is the employment of two Narrators, who not only comment on the drama as it unfolds, but who also occasionally tell the story while the action is mimed by the

actors. Duncan saw a link here with classical Greek drama, and he accordingly renamed them Male and Female Chorus with a single singer representing each group. He reduced Obey’s cast to two small groups comprising three characters each: Lucretia herself and her two attendants neatly counterbalance Tarquinius and the two Generals, and as the story unfolds each group is first presented separately before the tragic interplay between them commences. There is a certain formality in the symmetry of this arrangement which appealed to Britten and which he mirrored in the composition of the orchestra. He employs twelve musicians in all: a string quintet (one player representing each of the usual divisions of the string orchestra); a wind quintet (one representative of each of the usual wind departments together with a horn); a harpist and a percussionist (who is responsible for the usual array of instruments). In addition, the conductor is directed to accompany the recitatives on the piano. Given his complete understanding of the capabilities of each instrument, Britten is able to draw the most extraordinary range of colour from this small orchestra: essentially he treats it as an ensemble of soloists which can be exploited in what seems to be an inexhaustible variety of combinations. The emotional import of The Rape of

Lucretia is due in no small measure to Britten’s masterly handling of these limited resources to evoke all the intimate expressiveness one associates with chamber music while at the same time sacrificing nothing of the dramatic intensity one expects in an opera. The first performance of The Rape of Lucretia was given at Glyndebourne on 12 July 1946. The following year, when Britten and Eric Crozier established the English Opera Group, the composer finally had a company of his own for the production of new works. In 1947, it staged a second chamber opera, Albert Herring and this was followed by Britten’s realisation of The Beggar’s Opera (1948), his children’s opera The Little Sweep

(1949), The Turn of the Screw (1954) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960). Although Britten did return to large-scale opera, he never abandoned his pursuit of a radical clarity of expression. This stylistic evolution, which can be traced in the successive chamber operas in particular, ultimately led to his unprecedented and astonishingly original adaptation of the genre in the three Church Parables of the 1960s. But its first sustained mature expression is undoubtedly to be found in The Rape of Lucretia.

Séamas de Barra Cork, August 2014

1 Quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten: A Biography (London, 1992), 2252 Quoted in Christopher Palmer ed., The Britten Companion (London, 1984), 1283 Quoted in Ronald Duncan, Working with Britten: A Personal Memoir (Welcombe, 1981), 75

c1945 at the Mill House Snape

unidentified photograph

er. © britten–pears foundation.

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Synchronicity between past and present may seem, at best, tenuous. Predilections and preferences can change and vary as one generation melds with its predecessor. Arguments, discussions, opinions which vigorously exercised critics and commentators can sometimes quietly resolve but more frequently dissolve, as time passes. Cutting edge can become commonplace.

But in a contemporary age when technology has offered us the opportunity to record occurrences as they happen, we can re-experience the past, re-live a live occasion, re-capture those soft, lapping Lydian airs. We can sometimes understand, perhaps in some greater depth, why certain events became memorable long after living memories have gone. To

paraphrase Shelley, the re-mastered CD, for example, allows music, when soft voices die, to vibrate in the memory.

The music of Benjamin Britten was thoroughly recorded, researched and rehabilitated last year in particular when the centenary of the composer’s birth was celebrated in spectacular fashion. But the focus on his personal life revealed a number of darker sides which, to an extent, continued to explain some of the undercurrents, the contradictions, in his musical life.

For instance, Britten himself used “the establishment” but also railed against it and eventually became part of it. His pacifist views, a reflective constant in his compositional output, led to his

abandonment of his native land in 1939 and yet three years later he had returned, famously remarking that North America had “all the faults of Europe and none of the attractions”.

The music itself saw its fair share of controversy, largely due to the usual opposing camps of worshippers and detractors. Britten was regarded by some as the

greatest English composer since Purcell – which seems a little rash to anyone who has heard of Elgar. Elgar of course had more or less stopped composing before Britten was ten years of age and he was dead when Britten had only just reached his age of majority.

The main theme of debate centred more around living English composers and the crux of the

BEnJAmIn BRITTEn And HEATHER HARPER And vOICEs FROm THE PAsT

Lap me in soft Lydian airs,Married to immortal verse,Such as the meeting soul may pierceIn notes with many a winding boutOf linked sweetness long drawn out,With wanton heed and giddy cunning,The melting voice through mazes running,Untwisting all the chains that tieThe hidden soul of harmony…

from L’Allegro by John Milton

Heather Harper with Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears at The Red House, Aldeburgh in 1963

unidentified photograph

er. © britten–pears foundation.

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matter was that Britten could be dismissive of most English music other than his own, though not in such an arrogant fashion as that may at first appear. He was bored by Elgar, had an uneasy attitude towards William Walton, his main rival, and he could often be especially vitriolic about Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was thirty years his senior and no real threat at all. The one English composer he consistently admired, with some bias perhaps, was his erstwhile teacher Frank Bridge.

It seems from the perspective of passing time that Britten was ambitious to become recognised as the leader of the pack and especially in the field of opera. It was Peter Grimes, in June 1945, which firmly and spectacularly established him as a force in opera and in English music in general. As Michael Tippett wrote on Britten’s death in 1976, Britten “was now willing in himself, and, indeed, determined to be, within the twentieth century, a professional opera composer. That in itself is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do; and one of the achievements for which he will always be remembered in musical history books is that, in fact, he actually did it”.

To succeed in this operatic world, and to survive in the wider world, Britten surrounded himself with a group of hand-picked friends and supporters, more akin to

an exclusive clique of admirers, “who loved him and didn’t dare say boo to him” as music critic and commentator John Amis once said. It was also well known that, once rejected by Britten and removed from the inner circle, you became a non-person – or a “corpse” as the composer’s one-time friend Lord Harewood recognised himself to have become after his divorce.

There were consequences from flying too close to the sun but many very talented people were prepared to take up the challenge of Britten’s friendship. His intimate and most personal protector was, notoriously, Peter Pears. He embodied the fact that, despite the diverse and extensive range of media for which Britten wrote, the voice became inextricably linked with his music more than any other “instrument”. Pears undoubtedly provided the revelatory vehicle for Britten’s compositional genius; he was “the instrument of his soul”.

But there were other voices who, to greater and lesser extents, also shared in the process which affirmed Britten’s musical position in England and assured his international renown. Many of the vocalists emerged from the operatic company which Britten himself founded in 1946, originally known as Glyndebourne English Opera Group. That was for the premiere of The Rape of Lucretia in July of that year but subsequent tensions

with Glyndebourne’s owner and financier, John Christie, led to a split. An independent English Opera Group was established at Aldeburgh, Britten’s adopted home town, and from that move sprung, Athene-like, The Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts, launched in 1948.

Many leading British singers were members of the group, including Janet Baker, Kathleen Ferrier, Heather Harper, Sylvia Fisher, Jennifer Vyvyan, Owen Brannigan, Peter Pears, John Shirley-Quirk and Robert Tear.

To a modern, young generation, probably those singers are merely names from the history books, voices from the past who seemingly have little relevance to the present day. But there was a reason why each of them became household names in the fifties, sixties and seventies; thanks to the technology to which I referred at the outset of this essay, you can still hear and see them at the height of their vocal powers , although Time has long since taken its toll on their voices and, in most cases, their lives.

In that heady list of names above, of particular interest perhaps to those of us who live on this island of Ireland is Heather Harper, whose vocal career itself became so closely entwined with the music of Benjamin Britten. Born in Belfast and now in her eighty-fifth year,

she originally started out as a pianist but changed course after her years of study at Trinity College of Music in London to concentrate on her voice. She went regularly for lessons to Helene Isepp, who also taught Janet Baker, that other great Britten vocal proponent. Aged twenty-six, she became a member of the English Opera Group and remained so until 1975 when the company underwent a number of changes, including its name.

Throughout the three decades of her official, professional stage career, Heather Harper sang in nearly every opera which Britten wrote with a soprano role, and performed in the host of other vocal works which Britten produced so generously. She created the role of Mrs. Coyle in the original TV production of Owen Wingrave in 1971 and was often noted for her compellingly sincere Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes, or her otherworldly Miss Jessel in The Turn of the Screw. She made her Covent Garden debut as Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1962.

That was the same year that she became inextricably linked with one of the most resonant works of Britten’s entire output. The War Requiem. In a revealing article, and strangely one of the very few I could find about Heather Harper, Times music critic Noël Goodwin takes up the story:

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“Vishnevskaya was unable to come to Coventry to sing in the premiere performance of the War Requiem, and Britten asked Heather to take on the soprano role with only 10 days in which to prepare it. She had previously sung in performances of his Spring Symphony and the Cantata Academica, but her success in the War Requiem led to a closer, friendly association with the composer and in turn to the acquisition of a country retreat in the form of a house at Aldeburgh where she goes whenever she can to rest and to study.” Opera Magazine July 1971

Thanks to modern technology, you can still capture some of the amazing atmosphere of that first performance of the War Requiem on 30 May 1962 in Sir Basil Spence’s newly re-built Coventry Cathedral as the original BBC recording has been re-mastered and released by Testament Records. Heather Harper is, as the Gramophone Magazine reviewer commented in December 2013, “at her peak, all gleaming beauty and commanding authority” as the assured and declamatory, lyric soprano soloist. It is little wonder that the audience at that first performance was stunned into silence.

Heather Harper will always be associated with the music of Benjamin Britten. But her outstanding international career

brought her into contact with the works of many other composers as well and she performed around the world with some of the greatest conductors of her day – Boult, Davis, Solti, Giulini, Barenboim, Haitink, Klemperer and Szell to name but a few. Because she was equally at ease with stage performance and the recording studio, she went on to become one of the most recorded artists of her day and it is this current legacy, this live link with the past, which will continue to reassert her reputation as one of the great singers of her generation.

…The melting voice through mazes running,Untwisting all the chains that tieThe hidden soul of harmony…

Dr. Philip HammondBelfast, August 2014

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REHEARsALs

Photos: Frances Marshall Photography

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The Ireland Funds are proud to support Irish Youth Opera. For over 35 years The Ireland Funds have supported innovative work that preserves Irish culture, counters sectarianism, advances education, strengthens community development and cares for those in need. Running since 2009, our Promising Ireland Campaign is on track to meet our goal of raising $200 million for Irish charities. So far, over 650 outstanding projects and organisations have received support from the Promising Ireland Campaign. Learn more about our work at www.theirelandfunds.org WHERE LIFE SOUNDS BETTER

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On a pleasant summer evening in May 1990, my wife and I were heading for the Gaiety Theatre, where the Dublin Grand Opera Society was giving the Irish premiere of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes. To my surprise, a gentleman accosted us and asked, in a rather cultured voice, if we were going in to see what he called “this strange modern opera”. When I assured him that that was indeed our intention, he looked at us sadly and said: “Oh, you are very brave.”

Well now! Curtain-up was nigh and I didn’t have time to quiz him on what sort of bravery he felt was needed for coping with a performance of one of the greatest operatic masterpieces of the previous 45 years. But I suspect that he was merely expressing the thoughts of the many Irish opera-goers whose operatic comfort zone didn’t extend beyond anything composed after the First World War. In the event, those same so-called opera lovers eschewed the chance of broadening their musical horizon by staying away from all four performances of the work in their thousands. What they missed was a thrilling presentation by a mainly British cast headed by William Neill in the title role and Pamela Myers as

Ellen Orford. What stood out above everything else, however, was the outstanding singing of the largely amateur DGOS chorus.

I had first encountered the operas of Benjamin Britten back in the late 1960s, when a small touring company from Northern Ireland brought a production of Albert Herring to a school hall in South Dublin. I no longer have the printed programme, but I do remember that the title role was sung by the Antrim tenor Uel Deane and that the performance was conducted by the distinguished Cork-born musician Havelock Nelson. The only other time I saw Albert Herring was in 1991, when the students of the DIT College of Music, as it was then called, staged it at the Gaiety. As far I know, only four of the singers from that production went on to have professional careers: sopranos Linda Lee, Fiona McAndrew and Sandra Oman; and tenor Donal Byrne.

I missed out on Wexford Festival’s Britten offerings, Albert Herring in 1970 and The Turn of the Screw six years later, but I did manage to catch three other Irish Screw productions. The first of these was in 1986 when the newly formed Opera Theatre

Company launched itself with a splendid staging at Dublin’s Gate Theatre. The opera was directed by Ben Barnes and conducted by Proinnsías Ó Duinn, two of OTC’s founding fathers. The central role of the Governess was sung by Virginia Kerr, who delineated the young woman’s complexities with secure singing and, as I remember it, very good enunciation. She repeated the role every bit as effectively seven years later in a touring production given by Opera Northern Ireland at the Elmwood Hall of Queen’s University in Belfast. That 1993 ONI staging was tautly directed by Sally Day and conducted by David Parry who, as I see from my Irish Times review, shaped Britten’s score authoritatively. More recently, the newly-formed Northern Ireland

Opera drew rave reviews for its tour of The Turn of the Screw in the Spring and Summer of 2012.

OTC returned to The Turn of the Screw in 2004, with a new production shared with English Touring Opera. This time out, Virginia Kerr took on the role of the housekeeper Mrs Grose, with Sylvia O’Brien singing the Governess. Although not as spectacularly staged as the 1986 inaugural offering, the ambience of pervasive claustrophobia was every bit as spine-chilling. I caught the production in the acoustically impressive Mullingar Arts Centre, where the Brazilian conductor Celso Antunes paced the action convincingly and elicited playing from his 13 instrumentalists that was in turn sumptuously passionate and chillingly taut.

The other OTC Britten I remember is The Rape of Lucretia, which I saw at Dublin’s Tivoli Theatre in 1990. Patricia Bardon, then at the outset of her impressive international career, headed a cast of mainly Irish singers that included Peter Kerr and Deirdre Crowley as the Male and Female Choruses; Michael Neil sang Collatinus, Joe Corbett was Tarquinius, Sheila McCarthy was Bianca and Kathleen Tynan sang Lucia. The opera was conducted by Jonathan Webb and directed by the well-known actor/director and Samuel Beckett authority Barry McGovern.

BRITTEn: An IRIsH PERsPECTIvEJohn Allen records some personal memories of Britten opera stagings in Ireland

Virginia Kerr as Governess in OTC’s production of The Turn of the Screw in 1986

photo by colm

henry

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By 2008, the amateur DGOS had translated itself into the fully professional Opera Ireland. That year’s staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream fared rather better at the box-office than the earlier Peter Grimes. Stewart Robinson conducted a mixed cast of Irish and overseas artists in an updated staging by Dublin-based choreographer David Bolger in sets and costumes designed by Monica Frawley. Prominent among the Irish singers were Louise Walsh as Tytania, Imelda Drumm as Hippolyta, Nyle Wolfe as Demetrius, Fiona Murphy as Hermia, Sandra Oman as Helena and Gerard O’Connor as the weaver Bottom.

I want to round out this short personal account of Britten operas in Ireland with a non-operatic event of considerable importance. In March 1963, less than a year after its premiere in Coventry, Tibor Paul conducted the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra, the augmented Culwick Choral Society and the Cathedral Choir in a memorable performance of the mighty War Requiem in the impressive if acoustically compromised surroundings of Dublin’s St Patrick’s Cathedral. The Wilfred Owen anti-war poems were sung by two British artists, tenor David Gallagher and baritone Donald Bell, while the soloist in the Latin Mass was the Belfast soprano Heather Harper, who had sung in the work’s world premiere under the composer at Coventry the previous year. Some years later, I had the

pleasure of hearing Heather Harper as Ellen Orford, opposite the truly terrifying Grimes of Canadian tenor Jon Vickers, at London’s Covent Garden.

Two other Irish singers whose international careers have encompassed the operas of Benjamin Britten are Dubliner Orla Boylan and Belfast-born Giselle Allen. Orla Boylan has sung Ellen Orford for West Australian Opera, the Governess with Angers-Nantes Opéra, and Female Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia with both English National Opera and New York City Opera.

Giselle Allen sang Miss Jessell in the aforementioned Northern Ireland Turn of the Screw in 2012, a role she has also sung at Opéra de Lyon and is scheduled to repeat in Zurich this Autumn. Last year she sang Ellen Orford in the production of Peter Grimes staged on the beach at Aldeburgh to mark the Britten centenary. This spectacular presentation is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray. She has also sung Ellen Orford with Opera North and at the Berlin Komische Oper and Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Canadian Opera in Toronto.

John AllenDublin, August 2014

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IYO would like to thank the following for their kind assistance:

Paula Best | Senator Jim Darcy | DIT Conservatory of Music |Peter Dunne|Denis Headon | Roy Holmes | Majella Holywood | Gráinne Killeen – Killeen Communications | Anthony Linehan |Maria Loomes | Vincent Lynch | Andrew McElroy | Harry McNamara | Merrion Hotel | Moore Stephens Patrick McNamara | Gary Mountaine |Paul O’Sullivan |Radisson Hotel Golden Lane Dublin | Rathmines and Rathgar Musical Society |Anne-Marie Stynes | Welsh College of Music and Drama


Irish Youth Opera

Irish Youth Opera

For as long as we can remember, the discussions about opera in Ireland have been dominated by what the country doesn’t have – in short, a national opera company or an opera house in Dublin. IYO is starting with what we do have – an abundance of talented singers.

We founded IYO to provide a professional platform for young Irish artists on the threshold of their careers. So many Irish artists enjoy international recognition before Irish audiences have even heard them – we will change that.

Not only will we mentor and support, encourage and inspire artists, we will also produce compelling and entertaining opera for you.

Artistic Director Colette McGahon

CEO Paul McNamara

Artistic Consultant Dr. Suzanne Murphy

Administrative Director Laura Gilsenan

Administrator Andrea Gilsenan

Administrative Assistant Eve O’Donnell

Social Media Manager Andrea Delaney

PR Christine Monk

Patron Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland

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THE CREATIvE TEAm

Joe Vaněk DesignerFrom 1997 to 2000 Joe Vaněk was the Director of Design for the Abbey Theatre under Patrick Mason and for Wexford Festival Opera, the Design Associate under David Agler for the 2006 – 2008 seasons. He is primarily known in the theatre for his designs for the most recent plays of Brian Friel. These have included the multi-award winning production of Dancing at Lughnasa for which he received two Tony award nominations for the Broadway production. He has designed operas for all the major companies in Ireland and the UK and several in Europe and America. These have included – for OTC – Così fan tutte, The Rake’s Progress and Orfeo. Don Giovanni, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Silver Tassie (Irish Times Theatre Award – Best costumes 2001) and The Queen of Spades for Opera Ireland. La cena delle beffe, Turandot / Don Giovanni, The Duenna, Transformations, Rusalka and The Mines of Sulphur for Wexford. Maria de Buenos Aires for Cork Opera House and three one act operas – Il combattimento, The Telephone and A Hand of Bridge for the Opera Briefs at the Lir. In the UK – ENO – Il trittico, Opera North – Don Pasquale, Ariane and Bluebeard and Caritas. WNO – Rigoletto. The Buxton Festival – The Poacher. The Royal Danish Opera – The Love for Three Oranges, La Contesa dei Numi. Opera Zuid The Makropulos Case. New Israeli Opera Don Pasquale. Glimmerglass Opera Festival (USA) Medea (Cherubini).

Michael Barker-Caven DirectorOpera: Pagliacci – Irish Theatre Award (ITA) Winner, Best Opera 2012 (Everyman/Cork Operatic), revival of La bohème (Opera North) Albert Herring (Mid Wales Opera), Medea (Glimmerglass Opera, New York), The Duenna (ETO/Royal Opera House), The Mines of Sulphur – ITA Winner, Best Opera 2008, Transformations – ITA Winner, Best Opera 2006 (Wexford Festival). Theatre: Conservatory (Abbey, Dublin), Best Man (Everyman/Project), Shadowlands (London’s West End – Wyndham’s & Novello Theatre starring Charles Dance and Janie Dee), October, Miss Julie, Alice in Wonderland, Blackbird, The Secret Garden, Dandelions, The Goat (or Who is Sylvia?), Skylight (Landmark Productions). Richard II (co-production Abbey/Everyman), Amadeus, Tales from Ovid – ITA Nominee, Special Judges Award 2002, Macbeth, Richard III – ITA Nominee, Best Director 2001, Mutabilitie, Anna Karenina – ITA Nominee, Best Director 1998, Troilus & Cressida, Venus & Adonis, The Fetishist (Ouroborus). Gate Theatre, Dublin: Little Women, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Anna Karenina, Play (Barbican/Gate), Old Times, The Shape of Things – ITA Nominee, Best Director 2002, Thérèse Raquin.

Stephen Barlow ConductorArtistic Director of the Buxton Festival, Stephen Barlow studied at Trinity College‚ Cambridge and at the Guildhall. He was a co-founder of Opera 80, and has appeared at Glyndebourne, The Royal Opera, English National Opera, Opera Northern Ireland and Scottish Opera; he has conducted the premières of his own opera King at Canterbury Cathedral and his Clarinet Concerto with Emma Johnson and the Ulster Orchestra, as well as Capriccio with San Francisco Opera and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Sweeney Todd with Bryn Terfel at the Royal Festival Hall, Elektra and Faust in Seville‚ The Cunning Little Vixen in Berlin‚ Madama Butterfly‚ Don Giovanni and Il trovatore in New Zealand‚ and Carmen and Roméo et Juliette in Australia. He has conducted most of the major orchestras in the UK and worldwide. Recent and current projects include Les contes d’Hoffmann in Beijing‚ Dvořák’s Jacobin‚ La Princesse Jaune‚ La Colombe‚ Intermezzo, The Barber of Baghdad and Otello at the Buxton Festival; Capriccio‚ Tristan und Isolde‚ Pique Dame‚ Dialogues des Carmélites and Peter Grimes at Grange Park Opera, Bruckner 8th with the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Recordings include his own composition Rainbow Bear, with his wife‚ Joanna Lumley‚ as narrator. As a pianist, he has recorded the complete songs of Butterworth, Delius and Quilter.

Sinéad Mckenna Lighting Designer

The Price, An Ideal Husband, Private Lives (Gate Theatre), Aristocrats, Quietly, Alice in Funderland, The Plough and the Stars, 16 Possible Glimpses, The Burial at Thebes, Howie The Rookie, Finders Keepers (Abbey Theatre); Howie The Rookie (Irish Times Award Best Lighting Design), Greener, October, Last Days of The Celtic Tiger, Blackbird (Landmark); Waiting for Godot (Gare St Lazare); Agnes, Pageant, Swept (Cois Ceim); Dubliners, (The Corn Exchange), Travesties, The Importance of Being Earnest, Improbable Frequency (New York Drama Desk Best Lighting Design for a Musical nomination 2009), The Parker Project, Life is a Dream, Attempts on her life and Dream of Autumn (Rough Magic); New Electric Ballroom (Druid); Best Man (Everyman Productions); Nivellis War (Cahoots); Skull in Connemara, Faith Healer, Doubt (Decadent); The Making of ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, The Lulu House Medea (Siren Productions); Philadelphia, Here I Come! (Longroad); Macbeth, The Snow Queen, Merry Christmas Betty Ford (Lyric Theatre); She has also designed for Second Age, Performance Corporation, Guna Nua among others. Operas include The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro (Opera Theatre Company), Midsummer Night’s Dream (Opera Ireland); La traviata (Malmo Opera House); Opera Briefs (The Lir).

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Male Chorus – Ross Scanlon tenorA recent postgraduate student at the Royal Academy of Music in London, Ross Scanlon comes from Bray. He is an honours graduate of the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, where he was also the recipient of the Michael McNamara Gold Medal for excellence. A former Associate Young Artist with OTC, his operatic roles to date include Masino La vera costanza, Tamino & Monostatos The Magic Flute, Remendado Carmen, Lord Lieutenant, Master of the Rolls and Skeffington The Earl of Kildare (Irish Premiere), Pierre The Wandering Scholar (Irish Premiere) and the title role in Midas. He has performed with the RTÉCO and the Irish Philharmonic and his extensive oratorio repertoire includes works by Handel (Messiah, Alexander’s Feast and the Coronation Anthems), Haydn (Die Jahreszeiten, Creation and Missa in Tempore Belli), Mendelssohn (Elijah and St Paul), Stainer (Crucifixion), Mozart (Vesperae Solemnes de Confessore and Coronation Mass),

Schubert (Mass in B flat), Jenkins The Armed Man – A Mass for Peace and the Irish premiere of Goodall’s Eternal Light – A Requiem.

Female Chorus – Jennifer Davis sopranoJennifer Davis comes from Tipperary and is a recent alumna of the National Opera Studio in London. She is a graduate with first class honours from the Master’s in Vocal Performance at DIT’s Conservatory of Music and Drama and studies with Colette McGahon-Tosh. A former member of OTC’s Young Associate Artist programme, she is a multiple prize-winner including the prestigious Gervase Elwes Cup at Dublin’s Feis Ceoil. She was a semi-finalist in the 2012 International Hans Gabor Belvedere Competition in Vienna. Jennifer has performed extensively throughout Ireland and the UK both in concert and oratorio with orchestras including the RTÉ NSO, the ICO and the orchestra of WNO. Her operatic roles to date include both Susanna and the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, the High Priestess Aida and the Governess The Turn of the Screw.

Last October she made her debut with WFO as Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore as part of their ShortWorks series where she also received the Gerard Arnhold prize. Jennifer returns to Wexford this season to perform the role of Agata in Cagnoni’s Don Bucefalo. Winner of the 2013 Bernadette Greevy Bursary awarded by the National Concert Hall, Jennifer’s further studies are supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, English National Opera and a Sybil Tutton Award administered by Help Musicians UK.

Collatinus – Christopher Cull baritoneChristopher Cull is an alumnus of Queen’s University Belfast and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. A current recipient of the BBC/Arts Council NI Young Musicians’ Platform and a former OTC Young Associate Artist, his operatic roles include Moralès in Carmen, Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte, Malatesta in Don Pasquale, Angelotti in Tosca and Fabrizio in La pietra del paragone. Recent operatic appearances include Le Geôlier/Javelinot in Poulenc’s

Dialogues des Carmélites for Grange Park Opera and Lane/Merriman in Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest with NI Opera/Wide Open Opera. Recent concert engagements include Messiah with the Orchestra of St. Cecilia, Dublin and a concert of arias with the Ulster Orchestra broadcast by the BBC.

Junius – Rory Musgrave baritoneFrom Connemara, Rory Musgrave is a recent Master’s graduate of the Royal Irish Academy of Music where he studied with Philip O’Reilly. His roles for the RIAM included Harasta in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, Sid in Britten’s Albert Herring, Ben in Menotti’s The Telephone, Priest in Handel’s Semele and Marco in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. Engagements elsewhere include Roommate in Flatpack (Ulysses Opera Company) Luka in Walton’s The Bear, (Good Works Opera), Uberto in Pergolesi’s The Maid as Mistress (Opera Antiqua) and Poseidon in Phaedra (Rough Magic). In addition to singing the role of Junius for IYO, 2014 will see Rory singing in the chorus of several other

THE CAsTLeft to right: Ross Scanlon, Jennifer Davis, Christopher Cull, Rory Musgrave Gyula Nagy, Carolyn Dobbin, Raphaela Mangan, Emma Nash

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Irish opera productions including NI Opera’s Macbeth, Wide Open Opera’s Nixon in China and in Rough Magic/OTC’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. As well as being the recipient of the John McCormack Cup at the Electric Ireland Feis Ceoil (2014) and a finalist in the Irene Sandford Competition (2013), Rory qualified for the Hans Gabor Belvedere International Singing Competition in Amsterdam (2013).

Tarquinius – Gyula Nagy baritoneBased in Ireland, the Hungarian baritone Gyula Nagy, graduated with a BA in Music Performance from the RIAM, where his teacher was Philip O’Reilly. A former member of OTC’s Young Associate Artists’ Programme, his operatic roles to date include the role of the Gamekeeper in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen in the RIAM’s recent production at the Samuel Beckett Theatre directed by Lynn Parker. Other operatic performances for the RIAM include Stravinsky’s Renard (2013), Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (2012), Barber’s A Hand of Bridge (2012), Handel’s Semele (2012). Elsewhere he portrayed the title role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, directed by Roberto Recchia, at the Zézere Arts Festival in Portugal (2012) and sang the role of the Bonze in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with Lyric Opera, (Dublin). As an oratorio soloist he has sung with the Irish Baroque Orchestra, the Earley Musik Ensemble, the Dun

Laoghaire Choral Society and with the University of Dublin Choral Society. A recipient of the bursary of the International Opera Awards Foundation, London, his studies have also been supported by the Tudás a Jövőnkért Foundation, Hungary. In 2014–15 he will join the National Opera Studio, London.

Lucretia – Carolyn Dobbin mezzo-sopranoA member of the Lucerne Theatre, Carolyn Dobbin comes from Carrickfergus. She was a Samling Scholar at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and is a former member of OTC’s Young Artist Programme. Companies worked for include ENO, Grange Park Opera, ETO, Castleward Opera, Bern Opera House, Mid Wales Opera, Opera Holland Park, OTC, The Opera Group and WNO. Carolyn Dobbin was a WNO Associate Artist and the recipient of the WNO Chris Ball Bursary in 2010. At WNO she sang Mercédès Carmen, Second Lady The Magic Flute, covered Maddalena Rigoletto and Carmen. Other engagements include Janet The Doctor’s Tale for ROH2, Scipio Caligula and Hannah The Passenger for ENO, Andronico Tamerlano for Capella Cracoviensis, Meg Page Falstaff for OHP, Maddalena Rigoletto for GPO. In Lucerne she performed Annio La clemenza di Tito, Penelope Il ritorno di Ulisse, Bradamante Alcina and the title role in Carmen. Concert performances include Messiah

with the Philharmonia Orchestra and at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Beethoven 9th at the Barbican, Mozart Requiem at London’s Royal Festival Hall and with RTVE in Madrid. Engagements in 2014 include Polina Pique Dame at GPO, Emilia in Rossini’s Otello at Buxton and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius.

Bianca – Raphaela Mangan mezzo-sopranoA multiple prize-winner at the Feis Ceoil and other competitions, Raphaela Mangan is an honours graduate of the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, where she studied with Anne-Marie O’Sullivan. She subsequently joined the Flanders Opera Studio where her repertoire included roles such as Geneviève in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Euridice in Haydn’s Orfeo and Idamante in Mozart’s Idomeneo. In addition to appearances with Opera Ireland, Co-Opera and the Anna Livia Festival, Raphaela has sung Orfeo Orfeo ed Euridice and Cherubino The Marriage of Figaro (Glasthule Opera), Tessa The Gondoliers (RTÉCO) and the third Water Sprite Rusalka (Lyric Opera). Elsewhere she has sung Buttercup in HMS Pinafore (Buxton Opera House) and Glasha in Janáček’s Katya Kabanova with Scottish Opera. In Ireland she has sung with the RTÉ NSO, RTÉCO and many of the country’s leading choral societies including Our Lady’s Choral Society in works by Handel, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Dvořák, Elgar

and Karl Jenkins. She has toured with the Irish Baroque Orchestra and has broadcast regularly including a special concert to celebrate the centenary of Kathleen Ferrier’s birth, which was featured on RTÉ Lyric FM.

Lucia – Emma Nash soprano

Cork soprano Emma Nash is in her final year of the opera course at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama studying under Suzanne Murphy and Michael Pollock. Recent performances include scenes from Ariadne auf Naxos (Zerbinetta), The Cunning Little Vixen (title role) and Falstaff (Nanetta) with the RWCMD Concert Orchestra. Other roles include Moppet in Britten’s Paul Bunyan with WNYO (Wales Millennium Centre), which was nominated for a Southbank Sky Arts Award. Other recent highlights include Lucia The Rape of Lucretia (RWCMD), The Controller (cover) in Jonathan Dove’s Flight (RWCMD), First Niece in Britten’s Women at The International Bath Music Festival (RWCMD) and Eurydice Orpheus in the Underworld (Opera’r Ddraig). Emma is a former OTC Young Associate Artist. Recent awards include the RWCMD Lee Freeman Scholarship Prize 2013, RWCMD Dolan Evans Award 2013, RWCMD Leverhulme Scholarship 2013 and two Arts Council Travel and Training Awards. Recent engagements include an opera gala in Dordrecht, Pamina in the 2014 RWCMD production of The Magic Flute and Janthe in Marschner’s Der Vampyr with The Cork Midsummer Festival.

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WExFORd FEsTIvAL OPERAArtistic Director David Agler | Chief Executive David McLoughlin | Head of Operations Aisling White | Artistic Administrator Nora Cosgrave |Corporate Development Executive Eamonn Carroll | Membership Development Executive Lucy Durack | Strategic Development Executive Christopher Massi|Marketing Manager Tracy Ryan | Marketing Officer Seamus Redmond | Media Relations Executive Elizabeth Rose Browne | Marketing Intern Jason Whitty | Admin. Assistant Christina Cahill | Financial Controller Denise Kavanagh |Accounts Assistant Patricia Bonham Corcoran | Technical Director David Stuttard | Facilities Assistant Nicky Pender |FOH Manager Nicky Kehoe | Box Office Ann Wilde, Geraldine O’Rourke

Bríd Ní Ghruagáin Audio DescriberOne of Ireland’s two qualified audio describers, Bríd has been facilitating visually impaired audiences in theatre, dance, film and the visual arts since 2009. In conjunction with Arts & Disability Ireland, Bríd has focussed on expanding the range of arts made accessible to VI audiences taking on a greater variety of projects each year.

A producer of theatre, radio and television, and a mezzo-soprano and recent graduate of the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama M Mus (Performance), Bríd is delighted to have been approached by IYO to work with them on delivering Ireland’s first ever audio-described opera production.

photo by frances m

arshall ph

otography

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iPhone | Android | BlackberryThe performances on 6 September (Wexford) & 11 September (Dublin) will be audio-described by Bríd Ní Ghruagáin – facilitated by Arts & Disability Ireland with funding from the Arts Council.

Documents

PRESENTING THE FUTURE Irish Youth Opera 1 Irish Youth Opera · Clarinet Conor Sheil | Bassoon Ates Kirkan | French Horn Joseph Ryan | Percussion Noel Eccles | Harp Dianne Marshall