The appointment of Jerome Hynes as managing director in 1988 marked an important turning point for the Wexford Festival.
He didn't come from Wexford, and he had no background in the world of opera. But he was a breath of fresh air - young (not yet 30), personable, dynamic, full of new ideas and blessed with a boundless eagerness to implement them.
He moved to Wexford from Druid Theatre in Galway, where, with his sister Garry, he had been instrumental in catapulting that company to the forefront of cultural life in Ireland.
In a 2003 interview he said: "Clearly what Wexford wanted to do, and what I wanted to do, was to professionalise the operation."
This he did with gusto, and the pace and extent of his reforms and developments were remarkable.
Shortly after his appointment, he set about quantifying the festival's achievements, and The Economic and Social Contribution of the Wexford Opera Festival, a report prepared by TCD's department of economics, was published in 1989.
The labyrinthine structures of control at the festival were rationalised, in a kind of analogue of the streamlining that's been recently implemented at the national theatre.
In three years he expanded the festival from 12 to 18 days. In tandem with the extension of the Theatre Royal, completed in 1987, this effectively doubled the box office potential of the festival over a four-year period.
He rode out public storms about the employment of Irish singers and musicians, citing the need for artistic independence in terms of casting, and financial self-preservation to justify the use of orchestras from Belarus and Poland.
As festival chairman Paul Hennessy has rightly remarked of this passionate, committed dynamo of a man, "His commitment to Wexford festival was absolute and total."
The shockwaves, professional and personal, from his sudden death will be deeply felt within and without the world of the arts for a long time to come.
