ROGER DOYLE,
Madam, - I write in support of Lindsay Armstrong's letter concerning the large sums of money the Wexford Opera Festival receives without employing Irish musicians (October 25th).
Here are some figures from the Arts Council of which your readers may be unaware: In 2001, the total funding for opera was €2.78 million. The total funding for all other music activity was €3.2 million euros; this includes all traditional, all jazz, all contemporary, all classical, all popular music.
Furthermore, the Wexford Opera Festival has never mounted a production of an opera composed by a living Irish composer. The larger Opera Ireland (formerly the Dublin Grand Opera Society) has produced two Irish operas: one in 1968, the other in 1943. It receives over €1 million a year from the Arts Council and are looking for a lot more.
This is a democracy. In line with its own published criteria on opera - "to increase the number of commissions to Irish artists and more performances of their work at home and abroad" - the Arts Council's funding must surely be conditional on Irish musicians and composers benefiting. - Yours etc.,
ROGER DOYLE, Killarney Road, Bray, Co Wicklow.
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Madam, - The ghost of Eamon de Valera lives on in Lindsay Armstrong, managing/artistic director of the Orchestra of St Cecilia, who is "very angry" at the expenditure of Irish taxpayers' money on non-Irish artistes at the Wexford Opera Festival.
More in tune with 21st-century Ireland was the response from an Irish rugby official, when I bemoaned the gap between Irish rugby and that of England and France: "We'll just have to work harder and step up to their level."
We have just returned from four marvellous days at this year's Wexford festival. We could not help noticing, compared with the time of my Dublin schooldays and before the advent of EC funding, the resuscitation of rural Ireland, the material well-being and the superb east coast roads. Not to mention the amazing lists published in your newspaper of artistic events of every kind being performed the length and breadth of the land!
The very high standard of this year's Wexford offering - in production, design, direction, singing, playing - along with the obvious joy in both performance and teamwork should be a benchmark for Irish artists to aspire to and reach.
Mr Armstrong would serve art in Ireland better by achieving such a level of quality with his orchestra that they become the automatic choice for the Wexford Opera Festival in years to come. - Yours, etc.,
ERIC H. LOWRY, Great Haseley, Oxfordshire, England.