OnTheTown: All roads and one rail line led to Wexford this week for the opening night of the 54th Wexford Festival Opera.
Around 150 opera fans travelled in style from Dublin to Wexford on the annual opera train, much to the bemusement of early evening commuters at Pearse Street Station.
On arrival, they joined some 20,000 Wexfordians and festival-goers at Wexford Quays for a spectacular festival fireworks display, before heading to the Theatre Royal for Thursday night's opening performance of Gaetano Donizetti's Maria di Rohan.
Despite the glamour and glitz, proceedings were tinged with sadness, following the sudden death of the festival's chief executive (and vice-chairman of the Arts Council), Jerome Hynes, last month.
Festival chairman Paul Hennessy, who attended the opening with his wife, Angela, said Hynes was missed terribly but the festival had to go on - just as he would have wanted.
Describing Wexford as the "centre of the opera world", Hennessy expressed his delight that the festival had taken a "big step" towards the realisation of its dream to create a new home to replace the Theatre Royal with the news that Sir Anthony O'Reilly and Independent News and Media have donated €2 million to the development fund for the new €28 million theatre in Wexford.
New artistic director David Agler said he was settling in well in Wexford and was looking forward to his three-year stint at the artistic helm.
"I conducted at Wexford in 1996 and 2000, so I knew what a thoroughly wonderful place it was and I had made many, many friends here," he said. "There are very exciting times ahead of us, but they will test our ingenuity and our creativity. It will be different, but we don't know how different."
Bernadette Greevy, of Dublin's Anna Livia Opera Festival, thoroughly enjoyed the production of Maria di Rohan.
There was a lot of tradition in the production and the voices were wonderful, she said. Planning for next year's Anna Livia Opera Festival has already started, she added.
Attending opening night were the chairwoman of the Arts Council, Olive Braiden; the director of the Arts Council, Mary Cloake; the chairwoman of the Abbey Theatre, Eithne Healy, and her husband, Liam Healy (who is a board member of the festival foundation); the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin; and the Mayor of Wexford, Tommy Carr.
Wexford Festival Opera runs until Nov 6