Pia Maltri is an online advertising consultant living in Dublin. She was born in Italy and first fell head over heels for opera when she was a teenager by listening to recordings of some of the great voices of the past: Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Mirella Freni, Mario Del Monaco, etc. She holds a degree in Italian Literature and writes about opera in her blog www.thesidebalcony.wordpress.com.
Dinner at Eight, William Bolcom and librettist Mark Campbell's 2017 opera, had its European première at Wexford Festival Opera on Saturday under conductor David Agler. The opera is based on the 1932 play by George S Kaufman and Edna Ferber, in turn adapted into a movie by George Cukor (1933).
Joshua Bloom and Paula Murrihy excel in Irish National Opera's staging of Bartók's opera, although director Enda Walsh takes too many liberties with the libretto.
The biggest stigma associated with opera in Ireland is not that it is an elitist art form, but that it is not “Irish”, and that it doesn’t belong to Irish culture, more of a recent import, like pasta, or avocado.
Franco Alfano’s name is inextricably linked to that of Puccini, as he’s mostly remembered for completing the unfinished score of Turandot, and has overshadowed his own operas.
Ovid’s Metamorphosis (on which the episode of Acis and Galatea is based) set in an Irish pub? Cowboys in place of shepherds and a bartender instead of a nymph?
