2012 Wexford Opera Festival
Artistic Director David Agler is delighted to announce that the rarely-performed Italian opera, L’Arlesiana by Francesco Cilèa will open the 61st Wexford Festival Opera on Wednesday, 24 October, 2012.
L’Arlesiana is a melodrama in three acts to a libretto by Leopoldo Marenco, first performed on 27 November 1897 at the Teatro Lirico di Milano in Milan. L’Arlesiana tells the story of Federico, a farmer, who is madly in love with a woman from the village of Arles (l’arlesiana) and becomes entangled in a love-triangle. The opera is based on the play L’Arlésienne (1872) by Alphonse Daudet. Soon after its première, L’Arlesiana fell into oblivion but enjoyed a revival in the 1930s when it benefited from political support through Cilèa’s personal contact with Mussolini. While the opera as a whole isn’t well-known, most opera-lovers will be familiar with the tenor aria, È la solita storia.
Wexford Festival Opera will also stage Le Roi malgré lui by Emmanuel Chabrier, sung in French and A Village Romeo and Juliet by Frederick Delius, sung in English as originally announced. Full details of the creative teams and cast will be announced shortly, as will the details of the daytime performances of ShortWork operas, concerts and recitals.
