Tag Archives: opera

I’ve been a TV star in the past and of course, I’m a media personality through these columns but it’s hard to believe at my age, I haven’t been on stage. A few weeks ago I spotted the chance to rectify that when browsing the world wide woof I spotted a story on the ’Champion’s website. Ellen Kent Opera were looking for a dog to appear onstage for La Bohème. As it’s a Poochini opera, I thought I’d be perfect for the part so I dusted off my resumé and sent it on. After all, La Bohème features my favourite aria, ‘Your tiny Paw is Frozen’. Lo and behold, a few weeks later I got an email telling me that from all the dogs in Munster who had applied, I got the call. I howled with excitement, but I was really only practising my high C in readiness for my début. So, last Thursday afternoon, I hopped into the car …

The Wexford Opera Festival is a bit of an unusual proposition but it works and has done for years. Take three obscure operas, some of which haven’t seen the light of day since their début performance, and stage them again over the course of a few weeks. Of course, some operas are obscure for a reason and maybe they should be left mouldering but for every duffer there are several gems. This year was promising, with all three operas sung in Italian. It’s a general rule of mine not to go near German language opera. I find it dark and depressing. Surprisingly, opera in English is often woefully bad. There’s the advantage of being able to fully understand what’s going on without resorting to subtitles but there’s just something wrong about English language opera. You’re generally safer sticking with Italian or at a pinch, French. We travelled down in the aftermath of Ophelia and just before storm Brian made itself …