Opera Theatre Company’s much-praised recent production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni in a racy new Dublin-oriented, English translation by Roddy Doyle is just one of a number of welcome recent developments in the world of opera in Ireland.
Ireland has long been shy of successful opera composers. But that is all changing. The tour-de-force of recent years is Gerald Barry’s take on Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, premiered in concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 2011 and since seen at the Royal Opera House in London (a production taken up by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra), in France and around Ireland. The Royal Opera’s Kasper Holten unstintingly declared it “the first great comic opera of the 21st century”.
Donnacha Dennehy’s The Last Hotel, a dark collaboration with Enda Walsh, has also been seen on both sides of the Atlantic. This month brings new operas by Ian Wilson, Roger Doyle, and Eric Sweeney, and there are more in the pipeline from Barry, Dennehy and Siobhán Cleary.
This unexpected golden age has materialised in spite of the still birth of the Irish National Opera company that Arts Minister Martin Cullen promised in 2009, and the related débacle surrounding the subsequent demise of the country’s longest-serving opera provider, Opera Ireland, in 2010, just short of its 70th anniversary.
Structurally, the good news of the last few years has been the effective ring-fencing of Arts Council funding for Wexford Festival Opera at a time when the council’s own grant-in-aid was being progressively cut by the government. Opera Theatre Company, the country’s other surviving, publicly-funded major opera provider, was not so lucky.
The council’s creation of a new opera production fund - a stop-gap measure since 2012 after the de-funding of Opera Ireland - has usefully encouraged the emergence of new companies which have dared to be different. Wide Open Opera brought Ireland its first Tristan und Isolde since the mid 20th century as well the Irish premiere of John Adams’s seminal examination of 1970s politics, Nixon in China. And a production style that sees opera flow off the stage and into the auditorium and beyond has taken root at the Everyman Palace Theatre in Cork.
But overall the provision of opera has fallen. The drop in the Arts Council’s own funding amounted to just under 21 per cent between 2007 and 2011. But the drop in the council’s support of opera over the same period was just over 52 per cent. The demise of Opera Ireland was the major loss. But Cork’s Opera 2005 also went under, in spite of its being a highly productive company in terms of what it delivered on a low funding base.
Time after time the council has decided that the artform is in need of fresh consideration, and has chosen to commission reports or set up working groups. The recommendations have typically been to develop opera and to start committing the necessary funds. But talk has usually led to more talk rather than the necessary funding increases.
A 2002 report, Towards a Policy and Action Plan for Opera, led to a 2005 working group, which in turn led to a decision to allocate €5.7 million for opera. But the council never followed through on its own decision. You don’t even have to factor inflation in to see what a failure the 2016 spend of €3.26 million actually represents.
It’s good news that the council has been considering opera again, and is planning to revisit and revise its current stop-gap solution. While compositional creativity has been flourishing and gaining composers acknowledgement from prestigious performing institutions abroad, it’s the staples of the operatic repertoire which have suffered at home. The regular provision by Irish companies of full-scale core repertoire for Irish audiences has been allowed to reach an all-time low.
Personnel changes in Merrion Square mean that the current council and executive are untainted by the disappointments of the last decade. The news from the budget has been good. Arts Minister Heather Humphrys has secured the Arts Council a €5 million uplift from the government, an increase of eight per cent.
The needs of opera lovers and the professional opera community have never been greater. We are guaranteed three rare operas every year from the Wexford Festival. But there is actually no guarantee whatsoever that the staples of the opera repertoire will be provided on the scale they were conceived in Dublin, Cork, Limerick or Galway. Ireland’s leading singers, directors, designers and conductors also suffer as a result. The resources necessary to start fixing opera provision are at last available. The time to do the right thing for opera is now.