Re-imagining Opera: Episode 4

Opera in Ireland has been going through something of a crisis. Last year the newly formed Irish National Opera Company closed just two years after its birth was announced due to financial cut-backs. Opera Ireland had been wound down to form it and Ireland was left with no national company and the loss of Opera Ireland. Today new roots are beginning to emerge including a new opera company called Wide Open Opera, launched by conductor Fergus Sheil. The Art Council is now supporting opera on a production rather than company basis and Wide Open Opera's first production, Wagner's Tristan Und Isolde, which was grant aided to the tune of €600,000, is the featured opera on RTE lyric fm this Saturday evening. A documentary on the production of Tristan & Isolde, the first in Ireland in some 50 years, goes out at 7pm on Friday.

For its first production Wide Open Opera took on Wagner's epic classic Tristan & Isolde. It's been a life ambition for founder and conductor Fergus Sheil but why this opera and why now? The tragic tale of the beautiful Irish princess and the Cornish war hero inspires some of the most beautiful music in Wagnerian opera yet this new production, which you can hear on RTÉ Lyric fm on Saturday night, was the first in Ireland in some 50 years. For those behind Wide Open Opera it was the sheer ambition of the project which appealed and the chance to cast probably the first Irish singer, Miriam Murphy in the role of the Isolde. For some at opening night it was their first time to hear an opera…

This episode is the fourth in the series Re-imagining Opera and was broadcast on Thursday 22nd November at 1.45pm on RTÉ lyric fm. The series is an Athena Media production for RTÉ lyric fm made with the support of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.