Wexford Festival Opera

During its first decade, Wexford offered an increasingly enthusiastic and knowledgeable audience such rarities as Lortzing's Der Wildschütz and obscure works (for that time) such as Bellini's La sonnambula was staged, with Marilyn Cotlow as Adina and Nicola Monti as Elvino.

Bryan Balkwill, Charles Mackerras and John Pritchard were among the young conductors, working with subsequently famous producers and designers like Michael MacLiammoir.

Increasingly, it was possible to recruit singers like Nicola Monti, Afro Poli, Franco Calabrese and Paolo Pedani as well as rising British and Irish stars as Heather Harper, Bernadette Greevy, Thomas Hemsley and Geraint Evans.

The 1962 L'amico Fritz brought the young Irish singers Veronica Dunne and Bernadette Greevy to international notice, while other distinguished names from the 1960s included Mirella Freni in Bellini's I puritani.

Albert Rosen, a young conductor from Prague, began a long association with the company in 1965, and he went on to conduct eighteen Wexford productions.

In 1967, Walter Legge, the EMI recording producer and founder of the Philharmonia Orchestra was asked to take over the running of the festival, but within a month of the appointment he suffered a severe heart attack and was obliged to withdraw.

A new era of outstanding singing emerged, with the first operas in Russian and Czech plus a new emphasis on the French repertory as represented by Delibes’ Lakmé in 1970 and Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles in 1971.

Spontini's La vestale was memorable for the incident involving the entire company slipping on a steeply raked, smoothly finished stage, as described by Bernard Levin.

Michael William Balfe's The Rose of Castile, directed by Nicolette Molnár and designed by John Lloyd Davies, was revived in a professional production in early 1991 to commemorate the festival's 40th anniversary.

In 2007, the festival took place in the summer in a temporary theatre in the grounds of Johnstown Castle, a stately home roughly 5 km from the town centre.