Re-imagining Opera: Episode 5

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.

What about the future of opera in Ireland? Is the goal still to create a national opera company ? Or are there other ways to foster opera in a cash strapped economy? We started by asking the two leading Irish women in the Tristan production, Miriam Murphy and Imelda Drumm – Imelda also just starred in Lyric Opera’s Aida production at the Gaiety last week…

This episode is the fifth in the series Re-imagining Opera and was broadcast on Friday 23rd 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.