From Dim to Dark before the curtain rises

Colm Toibin at the Wexford Opera Festival

THAT WAS THE YEAR THEY DID "THE PEARL FISHERS" at the Wexford Opera Festival. And if you wanted to go down from the school to the opera you had to go to the music room each afternoon and listen to the opera on record. From the window you could see the church spires and the grey slate roofs of Wexford. And down there beyond the town was the sea. By late October in the hour after class you could look down at the sea as it darkened to the colour of slate.
Anywhere was okay as long as it was some place else. Even pearlfishing, which was what the chorus' in the opera seemed constantly about to do, seemed promising. Not as promising, however, as the prospect of a night down in Wexford with the possibility of chips on the way home and the sure fire chance that the fleshpots from the local convent would be everywhere. So that the opera didn't impinge as it was played on a stereo each afterrnoon. It was simply necessary to attend. The story was told over and over; the motifs of the opera were explained. Outside the sky was becoming grey and dismal; soon it would be time for study.

There was no study the night of the opera. Instead, shoes had to be polished and uniforms donned. The march from the school down the hill to the opera house had to be orderly and brisk. At some stage there had been a long lecture on how to behave during an opera which seemed to centre mainly on crisps, sweets and boxes of chocolates and how these things were not to be consumed under any circumstances. All those who marched down to the opera were to march back up to the school in a body when the opera was over. There was to be no ogling at girls from the connvent. The good name of the school was mentioned.

The Theatre Royal in Wexford is set in a narrow street full of ordinary-looking houses. It lacks the ornate, luscious decor generrally associated with opera houses. It is as angular and plain as a Norman keep; its air of no nonsense derives from the legacy we brought with us when we invaded this part of the country in 1169. We had no time for curlicues or alabaster, gold leaf or stucco; we wanted a plain opera house and when the time came this is what we got.

The Theatre Royal was being innvaded by girls from one convent all dressed in brown and girls from another convent all dressed in green. Several fellows wondered how long it would be until the interval. The lights would dim and the conductor would go running down towards the pit; we had been warned that we were to applaud at this stage so we applauuded. It was all according to plan: first the overture and then the chorus, the sort of high-pitched stuff you caught on the radio late at night as you turned the knob to get from station to station. The pearl fishers seemed ready to go fishing. One woman in the chorus had an incredibly long neck.

It takes a while in Bizet's "The Pearl Fishers" for the tenor and bariitone to discover that they're in love with the same woman, to sing her praises and then swear eternal frienddship to each other. The motif we were told to watch for took its time in coming: how the notes which were used to express their admiration for the woman would later haunt the opera and our friends Nadir and Zurga.

I can remember what it was like that night to hear this sort of music for the first time, what it was like to sit transfixed in an opera house'. The duet is probably one of the most famous in all opera and we had been listening to it in the music room all week. It had seemed interesting, dramatic. But now the stage. was yellow with light ... oui c 'est elle , c 'est fa d e e se '.' . the tenor and bariitone were following each other, guidding each other's voices, hitting sweet harmonies. They swore eternal frienddship as they would later fight to the death and all the time the sequence of notes, the tune, the motif . . . oui c 'est elle, C 'est la deese ... made brief appearances, played by the harp, the flute, to warn, to remind, to mock.

Leila, the woman they loved, was played by a black soprano called Christaine Eda Pierre. She looked like nothing on earth; she was dressed up, gorgeous asa jungle bird, queen of the pearl fishers. Aria followed aria, baritone, tenor, soprano, broken by the chorus. Before the interval the tenor sang a solitary love song to our heroine, as well he might. Wistful, full of yearning, someone who wanted something. It was difficult to know what to do at the interval. Difficult to know where to look. Embarrassing.

All the music in the first half and the emotions which accompanied it flew about like birds of prey in the second half pecking out the eyes of love and honour and friendship. If for a moment you believed in any of it you were away. It was the sort of high drama that is generally much missed in a boys' boarding school. This reporter had been reading and contemplating a most operatic novel at that time - "The Great Gatsby" by Scott Fitzgerald - and half believed that down there in the world there were all these wonderful people who were constantly drinking, indulging in loads of sex, going to parties and having a terrific time generally. "The Pearl Fishers" helped to fill in the picture of the fantasy somewhat: these people also fell in love, suffered, betrayed each other and died. It was heady, as they say, and far from how this reporter was being reared.

Down in the town the bars would be open all night. Down in White's Hotel scenes from a Visconti movie were being enacted: women were gorrgeous as jungle birds, men were milllionaires. People were having the time of their lives. Your forrespondent, on the other hand, was trudging back to his boarding school in the company of his fellows: our main concern was to manage to buy chips without getting caught. It was nearly midnight; the lights would be off in the dormitory. Mass was at half seven in the morning.

THE SKY HAS BEEN CLEAR all day and the estuary of the river Slaney is pickled in a creamy blue light. It is thirteen years later and this reporter is on a train about to make its way into Wexford town. Accommodaation is booked in the Ferrycarrig Hotel and there are tickets for the three operas. It is the first Friday of the Festival; Monday is a bank holiday and the pubs are going to be open all night. A monkey suit is folded neatly in a bag.

The light changes all the time. By five 0 'clock all along the horizon of the big wide estuary that goes from Ferrycarrig into Wexford town there is an eerie, sharp flat light, pink with touches of orange.

""
It is that stillness I wait for.
Before it comes Whether we like it or not, we are a crowd,
Foul-breathed, gum-chewing, fat with arrogance,
Passion, opinion, and appetite for blood.
But in that instant, which the mind protracts
From dim to dark before the curtain rises,
Each of us is miraculously alone In calm, invulnerable isolation.
""

The poet is the American Anthony Hecht; the scene is the Theatre Royal and the opening night of "The Kiss' by Smetana.

The plot is as follows: boy meets girl and complications arise almost immediately. Boy. then marries other girl and other girl dutifully dies which leaves boy free to marry original girl. Whereupon further complications set in as girl refuses to kiss boy until the nuptials have taken place. Boy gets upset, goes down to village, gets drunk, comes back with a crowd and roars, or in this case sings, abuse at girl and to make matters worse kisses a wench from the village. End of boyygirl relationship. Girl goes smuggling with her aunt. Reconciliation and remorse are in the air. Boy makes it up with girl and they get ready to kiss each other. Boy refuses to kiss but this turns out to be only a joke. End.

The opera was sung in English so all the nonsense being sung was clear to the audience. A long aria consisted of the words: "Fighting like dogs just like I said fighting like dogs just like I said fighting like dogs just like I said". In Czech this would have sounnded terrific.

The pinnacle of the opera is the dramatisation of the Christian version of the moment of death.

Out in the foyer some of the poshest people in Ireland were standing around looking at each other. A television crew were making a documentary about Sir Alfred and Lady Beit and were busy getting in everyone's way. Champagne was flowing and there seemed to be an extraordinary number of unattached males wandering about or clustering in small groups. Noelle Campbell Sharpe was there. After the opera Noelle Campbell Sharpe ordered her companion to collect her in her car outside the opera house and take her to White's Hotel. White's Hotel is a few yards away.

White's Hotel used to be the centre .,. of social activity after the operas. In days of yore the bars would be crawling with people dressed up to the nines. For these three nights, however, the bars are full of young people looking for drink. The hotel could do with a lick of paint.

THE SKY WAS GREY OVER Ferrycarrig and there was a faint sound from the water which was being worked up by the wind. They have blasted a big hole in the rock on the south side of the river and are building a road to Rosslare which will by-pass Wexford. The Oak Tavern, just on the bridge, has made its way from being an ordinary country pub to being the sort of place where you will find Derek Hill and loads of his rich commpanions eating smoked salmon on a Saturday afternoon.

That afternoon the Wa1lfischjWeinnberg Trio gave their first recital in the Barn of White's Hotel. This is the place where so many love stories began. Every schoolboy's aim was to sneak down here some Saturday night and let it all hang out. You could drink until one o'clock in the bar; you could sit on the balcony and watch the dancers; you could get involved in the shuffling of the desscendants of the 1169 invasion with the mere Irish. This is the home of the dinner dance and the dress dance: the two great stalwarts of the Irish winter. Your correspondent has attennded many of these in this hall plus a wedding and a Bridge Congress. No~ it was Brahms and Beethoven and as - the music wended its way through the afternoon your correspondent could look up at the tinsel globe put there for the Saturday night dances, and the balcony, where late the sweet birds sang, now graced by Charles Acton and his wife Carol.

"Le Jongleur de Notre Dame" by Massenet with Patrick Power as Jean the juggler was tonight's opera. Power had been suffering from a chest infecction for the previous few days and this had adversely affected his performance the previous Wednesday. All eyes were now on Elaine Padmore, the artistic director, telling the audience that he had not fully recovered but would be appearing.

It is "The Drummer Boy" as nineeteenth century opera. The music is sweeter than Smetana's "The Kiss" and the set in Wexford was far better. This is Cluny in the fourteenth cenntury and just outside the monastery Jean is caught singing a drinking song and agrees to join the monastery and devote his life to God. But he has no particular skills and doesn't know what to do with himself and in the end does a hop and a skip and a juggle or two in front of the Virgin. The monks are appalled, but a miracle happens: the Virgin smiles on Jean and he dies. The drama is intense and the developpment is slow. It had been relayed live on the radio the previous Wednesday and even after one hearing it was easy to follow.

The pinnacle of the opera is the dramatisation of the Christian version of the moment of death, which probbably only opera can manage and the sort of thing which opera does best. The chorus of angels, the lights on the Virgin, the hushed voices after two hours of singing and yearning, all the motifs coming together to reppresent the unimaginable. Some in the audience were very moved: the man beside us was in tears for the last fifteen minutes.

The rain which had been threatenning in the morning was now coming down hard. White's had not been conngenial the previous night and.ianyway, this reporter was dying to go to the Crown pub, or Kelly's, off the Main Street which he used to frequent when he was a clerk in the Motor Taxation Office of Wexford County Council. This is one of the four great public houses in County Wexford, the others being French's in the Main Street in Gorey, the Antique Tavern in Ennisscor thy and Richie Roche's pub in New Ross. In the past few years it has opened up the two back rooms and during this year's festival was buzzing with activity which included a pub singing competition. The opera goers in monkey suits and the other drinkers in normal suits seemed to be mingling together with enormous ease.

ON FRIDAY AND SATURDAY people had mentioned that there was something special about the Cimarosa but no one had mentioned what. We tried to read a synopsis of the plot but failed to make any sense of it. "Le Astuzie Femminili", we learned, was first produced in 1794, just four years before the plots "The Croppy Boy", "The Boys Of Wexford " and "Boolavogue " were acted out. One thing was clear from the synopsis: they were having a lot more fun in certain parts of Italy in the last decade of the eighteenth century than we were in Wexford. Before the opera we walked along the quay used now by a few old fishing boats since the harbour silted up. In 1798 the women and children went out in boats and stayed out in the harbour to avoid the slaughhter in Wexford.

In Italy around the same time there was an heiress whose father had insissted that she marry an old man. She seems to have had a guardian, a young man, a friend and a maid and they all had a lot of fun falling in and out of love, misunderstanding each other, misdirecting each other and living happily ever after. Cimarosa must have had a lot of fun writing the opera and the Italians must have had a lot of fun watching it. But the opera has been forgotten because the plot thickens too much and because the music is not memorable and not a 'patch on Mozart. So why put it on? People told us there was something special about it.

The set, hairstyles and costumes looked like tsomething for a 1920s Noel Coward play about Garsington. The portraits being painted on the stage of our two heroes, and it was hard to distinguish heroes from antiiheroes at times, turned out to be an exercise in Cubism. Almost everything which happened on the stage was hilariously funny. Every move was beautifully timed. There was a mind behind this; something as perfect as this doesn't just happen by accident.

Andy Hinds produced this opera.

His previous work in this country has been done with the Druid Theatre in Galway; the same techniques have been apparent: an almost slapstick use of movement, every two seconds producing a new trick, every prop being used for at least three things by at least three people, probably all at the same time, leaving no stone unnturned in inventiveness. His Wexford production was one of the funniest things your correspondent has ever seen on the stage, didn't flag for a single moment and was a great day for Ireland.

It had been a long day's music, what with the opera just heard, and the afternoon.chamber recital. It was easy to sit in Kelly's bar and have several drinks and want nothing more than several drinks more. It WaS

Sunday night; duty was done; duty had been enjoyable, now for some serious drinking. There was only one thing and that was a midnight recital in the Arts Centre in Wexford by the young Irish pianist Hugh Tinney. It was sheer patriotism that got us out of the pub and up the road to the recital. There was a queue on the stairs; the hall was almost full.

This was like drinking cold clear spring water after too much alcohol. The big solid room of the old Cornnmarket building made the music, Lizst, Bach, Chopin sound louder and sharper. Anyone who stayed in the pub would have been mad. After all the chamber music and the opera this seemed like music in its element with its source in sound; this seemed simply a reminder that music, like life itself, creates a small pattern within a given space of time.

It was nearly one o'clock in the morning and Jim Golden the Chairman of the Festival was standing outside. He has been at every single venue morning, noon and night collecting tickets, showing people to their seats, watching in case there is anything wrong.

Himself and Barbara Wallace the Press Officer were there again the following morning for the Scenes from the Operas which had the Barn and balcony in White's Hotel packed to capacity. This is a grand gesture to those who can't afford the £20 for opera tickets and takes place at eleven thirty on six mornings of the Festival. The singers, to the accompaniment of the piano, perform well-known scenes from famous operas. Most of the people this Monday morning were local and the singers were greeted with enormous enthusiasm.

Patrick Power could not sing in the recital that afternoon as advertised so his partner in "Le Jongleur", Boniiface the Cook played by the Russian Sergei Leiferkus took over on his own and our very own John O'Conor exxtended his programme. The Russian ambassador and his wife were there. The songs were Russian and declaamatory with some wonderful little lyrical moments. The crowd went crazy.

The rain had gone but the menace in the sky had been building up since Friday. The wind was up. October was becoming November and there was a bleak look off the horizon on the harbour. The hour had changed and there were just a few people in Kelly's. bar when we went there for a last drink to celebrate the best festival in the country and to thank God that it was here we chose to invade in 1169 and not somewhere else. _