Wexford now has the finest performance space in the country - so who will use it when the festival isn't on, asks Fintan O'Toole
WITH THE opening last week of the new Wexford Opera House, something both wonderful and a little strange has happened. The wonderful bit is easily stated: Wexford now has what is unquestionably the finest performance space in Ireland. The new theatre is not just beautiful, it is also technically superb, with a stage that can be used in three different configurations, top-class lighting and stage machinery, an orchestra pit that actually looks big enough for the job, and, above all, an acoustic that is almost eerily good. The strange bit is less straightforward: it is far from clear what can or should be done with this stunning facility when it is not being used by the festival.
This is not, it should be emphasised, a complaint. No place in Ireland deserves a building as good as this one more than Wexford does. Even for those of us who can't entirely shrug off our scepticism about opera, the Wexford festival is a remarkable phenomenon. To create a world-class opera festival in a medium-sized Irish town in the 1950s and to sustain it for 57 years on the basis of the community's voluntary commitment is no mean feat. To do that while deliberately eschewing the standards of the operatic repertoire and specialising in neglected and forgotten works is a death-defying stunt. For that, and for the vision of the late Jerome Hynes, who saw both the need and the opportunity for a radical redevelopment of the old Theatre Royal, Wexford should be spared even the tiniest whiff of begrudgery.
It is also true that the new opera house is something in which everyone in the country should take some pride. Even if you hate opera and have no intention of visiting Wexford, the project stands as a rebuke to all the stupid negativity about the capacities of the public sector. In an era (now rapidly fading) when we were told that only the profit motive could create efficiency, it is worth noting that this public project was delivered, not just to a high standard of excellence, but on time, on budget, and in spite of formidable technical challenges.
The time was short: from the original idea to the finished building took just five years. The budget was tight: €33 million in all, just €27 million from the public purse. The cost per seat in the main auditorium was €42,000, compared to €365,000 in the new opera house that opened this year in Oslo. And the site was difficult. The early decision (inspired but problematic) was to build the new opera house on the site of the old theatre - in a narrow 19th century street. Essentially, the job consisted of inserting a state-of-the-art contemporary building into the fabric of the existing domestic and retail streetscape.
The result feels almost magical (you enter through a restored old house and emerge into a 21st century space of height, light and openness) but the process must have been extraordinarily difficult. Yet all of this has been triumphantly achieved, not by a big-name international star architect but by the Office of Public Works (led by Klaus Unger and Ciarán McGahon). If nothing else, the building stands as a monument to the possibility of the public service, given the right conditions, doing things very well.
The lovely thing about the building, though, is that you are completely unaware of any of these constraints. The place doesn't have the stuffy opulence of the traditional European opera house, but it does have a genuine elegance. The acres of American black walnut that cover almost every surface give you the feeling, as a member of the audience, of being inside a giant musical instrument, and the warmth of the acoustic gives substance to that feeling. There's a lovely nod to the 19th century theatre in the use of horseshoe-shaped tiers for the upper levels of seating - a light touch that allows the auditorium to float gently between the past and the present.
This space works marvellously for opera, and there's a case for saying that it should simply be left alone when the festival is not in session. The 175-seat Jerome Hynes Theatre, a black box space built as part of the new complex, is probably big enough for most other events (plays or concerts) that would be generated within Wexford in the normal course of the year. But the problem is that the main auditorium is almost too good. It has possibilities that no other space in Ireland can currently offer.
Those possibilities are to do with both scale and intimacy. The size of the stage is disproportionate to the size of the auditorium (which has just 780 seats) - a perfect situation for Ireland.
Usually, big stages come with cavernous auditoria. The result is that it is virtually impossible to stage really large-scale theatre pieces unless they can be guaranteed a huge audience. Wexford cuts through this problem, providing a performance space that can deal with epic productions but an audience space that could actually be filled by something other than a Broadway musical.
The intimacy comes from the acoustic. Its significance, for theatre, could be considerable. Those who remember the original Abbey theatre say that it had an extraordinary acoustic that made possible the "naturalism" of its early repertoire. Actors were able to speak softly and be heard, obviating the need for grand vocal gestures, and shifting the prevailing aesthetic of performance. Since that building was lost, we have not had an Irish theatre with that kind of acoustic. We have one now.
Though it must remain absolutely the home of the opera festival, it would be a pity if no one else had the chance to be inspired by it.