The Wexford Festival Opera, operating since 1951, is a really big deal. I met two gentlemen on the train who have been making the pilgrimage here from London annually for the last 40 years to see it. The Festival is especially known for staging unusual and rare operas. Their goal is to “celebrate the masterpieces that slipped through the net of public consciousness.” The theme of this year’s (2023) Wexford Opera Festival is “Women and War”. I’ll be seeing one of their operas Thursday night. You’ll read about it below.
The Wexford Opera Festival opens with a bang: fireworks and a carnival along the waterfront.
These carnies work fast. At 7:30 the midway was jam-packed with people. At 10:00pm, they turned off the lights. Now it’s 10:30 and the rides are almost all packed up.
And at 10:36pm all their trucks rolled out.
The National Opera House where the performances take place.
Last night, I attended a performance of “La Ciociara” about a mother and a daughter who were living in Rome during the waning days of World War II and who fled to the mother’s hometown of Ciociara for what they hoped was safety — although that safety eluded them in the countryside as well.
The Wexford Opera Festival is widely known in opera circles. Just the immediate grouping of attendees surrounding me included a woman from Brussels, a couple from Malmo in Sweden, another from Copenhagen, and a gentleman from Boston.
And I’m grateful that modern opera houses project the lyrics in English translation on the walls so those of us who don’t speak Italian know what’s going on. It was an excellent evening.
The Wexford Festival Opera is held for two weeks in late October and early November annually. It is a dressy venue. The crowd I saw definitely put on their Sunday best, so don’t be a schlump and show up in blue jeans. This isn’t your local cinema. Performances take place at the National Opera House on High Street in Wexford. Wexford is on Ireland’s east coast, roughly 155km south of Dublin. I took a comfortable train from Dublin to Wexford.
Ticketing begins online as early as May, although I arrived in late October and had no trouble ordering a ticket. During the two-week run of the festival, performances will rotate between three different operas, although there are other events as well, such as Festival Historical Tours or the Festival Opera Train Experience. Ticket prices I saw on their 2026 website ran from 119 euros to 159 euros a seat (although they may have been cheaper if purchased in advance, I was looking at what seats were left in late October).
October 27, 2023