Sir, – On your letters page (October, 24th) 11 wonderful singers serenaded us with the classic melodrama, Where has all the opera gone?, bringing us to tears with the haunting central aria, Few other areas have been quite so profoundly decimated.
So moved was I that I developed a new opera buffa in response called The opera's gone to Wexford where all the money is.
Let me set the scene: the second highest-funded arts organisation in Ireland is Wexford Festival Opera (€1.42 million in 2016). Opera Theatre Company received €680,000. These two opera companies received €400,000 more than the six regularly-funded music organisations combined and over double that given to traditional arts organisations.
Putting it all in perspective, the Irish Memory Orchestra’s only 2016 Arts Council funding was a festival grant of €7,750, down 20 per cent from 2015. Our friends at the Feakle Festival were cut by 100 per cent. Like them, we go into 2017 with no funding.
Now that’s decimation!
– Yours, etc,
Dr DAVE FLYNN
Artistic director,
Irish Memory Orchestra,
Ballyvaughan,
Co Clare.