The calm before the storm

THESE ARE suddenly straitened times, when decisions and actions by our political and business leaders over the past few years are going to negatively impact on many people who were not the making of the mess, writes Deirdre Falvey.

So before that mess truly hits the fan, it's heartening to have some good news.

Good news this week, certainly for the Abbey theatre, which was rewarded for getting its house in order by having its three-year funding renewed. This puts the theatre, which this week unveiled a very strong programme, on a secure footing. Other theatre companies, and arts companies generally, will undoubtedly be very pleased for the Abbey and will not begrudge them. But there are other companies who should also have three-year funding commitments, who are sound of body and art, operating at the top of their game nationally and internationally, and yet whose State support is drip fed annually, making any sort of advance planning a wing-and-a-prayer game.

What hope is there come next budget, for some stability in funding expectations?

But good news too, and let's cheer about it, for some individual artists.

The Arts Council has awarded 76 individual artists, writers, musicians, film-makers, visual artists and dancers - a variety of bursaries. The bursaries are up to €15,000 for each artist, with most hovering around the €5,000 to €10,000 mark. And the really nice news is that a few of those individual artists have been awarded multi-annual bursaries, where they will get a small award over three years; for an artist perched precariously trying to make their art and also make a living, the small degree of comfort (up to €45,000 over three years) must be a help. Multi-annual bursaries were awarded to writers Julia Kelly, Mike McCormack, Claire Kilroy and Darach Ó Scolaí; visual artists Gary Coyle, Sean Lynch, Tom Molloy, Margaret O'Brien, Niamh O'Malley and Linda Quinlan; music multi-annual awards went to Sarah McMahon and Sarah Sexton.

The Arts Council got 373 applications for the bursaries, and the total amount awarded this year is €915,210. Others who got bursaries included writers Philip Ó Ceallaigh, Mia Gallagher and Valerie Sirr, fiddle player Zoe Conway; film-makers Naomi Wilson and Stephen Burke; dance artists James Hosty and Catherine Young; and visual artists Séamus Nolan and Eoin McHugh. At a party at the Council's offices to celebrate the bursaries and the work of individual artists, director Mary Cloake said, "We know as well as you that what makes you an artist isn't the opening nights, the launches or the premieres. It's that quiet, yet insistent, voice within that must be heard. The wider public often sees only the tip of the iceberg. Today we acknowledge the hard work and long hours that go into creating art of the highest calibre."

Wexford Festival

IF EVER you needed a demonstration of the fact that we live in an age of directors when it comes to opera, you wouldn't need to look any further than the launch of this year's Wexford festival, writes Michael Dervan.

The information released at the launch gives the names of directors and designers, and even conductors and repetiteurs. However, even a magnifying glass wouldn't uncover the name of a singer from any of the casts. The two Irish singers featured on the website from a photocall (Anna Devin and Dean Power) are not actually in the casts of this year's productions of Rimsky-Korsakovs The Snow Maiden, Richard Rodney Bennett's The Mines of Sulphur or Antonio Pedrotti's Tutti in Maschera.

The omission of the cast details, however, does not appear to have been at all bad for business in the new Wexford Opera House, a venue which, by blithely ignoring the presence of the Grand Opera House in Belfast for over a century, claims to be "Ireland's first custom-built Opera House".

A genuine first for the festival is a new online booking system which allows opera-lovers to choose their own seats. In previous years there was a protracted application process with the allocation of tickets not being finalised until the month before the festival opened. A number of nights are already sold out, and no performance has more than a small number of seats available.

The Snow Maiden is the most popular, and The Mines of Sulphur is the only work that hasn't yet sold out for any individual performance. Booking has already passed 90 per cent for the three main operas, and is in excess of 75 per cent for the festival as a whole. Given that the new theatre has around 40 per cent more seats than the old Theatre Royal, the festival has, at this stage, already sold substantially more tickets than it ever did in its old home.

Russian soprano Irina Samoylova takes the title role in the Rimsky-Korsakov with Polish bass-baritone Krzysztof Szumanski as Frost, and Georgian mezzo soprano Natela Nicoli as Spring. John Fulljames directs, the designs are by Dick Bird and the conductor is Dimitri Jurowski, who scored a big success in last years Rusalka.

Bennett's Mines of Sulphur, a Gothic tale set in a decaying English manor house, has John Packard as the ill-fated Braxton and Allyson McHardy, John Bellemer, and Thomas Goerz the trio of evil-doers. Conductor Stewart Robinson, who scored a success in the work with Glimmerglass Opera in New York in 2004, conducts it again in Wexford; the director is Michael Barker-Caven and the designer is Joe Vanek. Rosetta Cucchis production of Tutti in Maschera, with sets by Federico Bianchi and costumes by Claudia Pernigotti, is a co-production with theatres in Savona, Rovigo, Piacenza, and has already been seen in Italy. The Wexford cast features Enrico Marabelli as the Damascan merchant Abdalà who gets embroiled in amorous intrigue in a Venetian opera company, and the work will be conducted by Leonardo Vordoni, replacing the Wexford Festival artistic director, David Agler.

Agler's casting again shows scant interest in Irish singers and a distinct reluctance to cast Irish voices in major roles. Just one Irish name currently features in a season that has more than 50 roles between the main operas and the piano-accompanied ShortWorks productions. The festival is, however, continuing with its employment of an orchestra sourced mainly from Irish musicians. Unfortunately for its bank balance, the Arts Council, beset by government arts funding cutbacks, has been slow to take its part in acknowledging the financial burden the festival has taken on by hiring Irish performers to play in the pit.

There is one interesting omen in this year's casting. Irina Samoylova came third in the operetta section of Vienna's Belvedere Singing Competition in 2003. That has to be a good news for the Wexford prospects of Irish mezzo soprano Naomi O'Connell. She has just become the first Irish singer to take a first prize in this competition. And, by curious coincidence, it was in the operetta section that she took the top prize. Maybe she can now look forward to a Wexford engagement, à la Samoylova, by the year 2013?

THE New Theatre production's UK premiere of The Tailor and Ansty opened this week at the Old Red Lion Theatre, Islington. Directed by Nuala Hayes, who stars alongside Ronan Wilmot, it opened in 2005 in Gougane Barra, where it will return next month.

COLM Lowney, artistic director at Wexford's Bui Bolg theatre company, was recently nominated as a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, who are chosen to demonstrate innovation, social responsibility and vision. Lowney commented: "Someone influential somewhere must have nominated me. It was a real surprise to find the nomination in the post, so thank you, whoever you are. Most importantly, it is really great that Bui Bolg and Irish street arts in general are getting the artistic recognition they deserve."