FROM THE ARCHIVES:Seamus Kelly delineated the social and class differences surrounding the Wexford Opera Festival in 1961 in this report. -
JOE JOYCE
THERE’S nothing like a bit of social competition to liven life in a county town, and in Wexford, at the moment, social competition is lively. First, there is the question of what opera stars any given hostess has collected. Second, there is the question of what cocktail parties any given visitor has been asked to. If you are a Wexford hostess, you score top marks with two or three visiting opera singers, who will do two or three arias for free (or for Martinis and Canapes).
If you are a visitor you mark your score card according to whether you have been asked out by the County, the professional classes, or mere trade. If you’re in the County class, you drop the news nonchalantly; if the professions have had you, you are less boastful; but if you have been invited by trade, you don’t mention it – you write yourself off as a social dead loss.
Also in the social scale, the festival is beginning to get off its knees. At least, that’s what I felt when, yesterday, I heard an attractive young woman ask an English visitor: “Is your watch showing the correct time?”
“Actually, my watch is half-an-hour fast, but as a matter of fact, it happens to show the correct date, and surely that’s all that matters in Wexford at this time?”
Wednesday was the day of recovery at the festival. There was no obligatory culture for anyone who had seen the two operas, and for the parties there was the Hibernian Ball at Rosslare, where Don Gemmel, of the Late Joys, was master of ceremonies. The ball, indeed, was a very stylish affair, patronised by the County and the tenantry alike to the tune of 190, at least 100 of whom enjoyed it well.
Wednesday’s invasion from the opera train all the way from Dublin was welcomed, particularly by those Dubliners who felt that they had been out of touch with what was going on at the centre of the world for too long. They breezed around Wexford sophisticatedly before the opera: then they took their stint of “Mireille”: then they came back, brimful of culture but rather envious of the stay-at-homes who had had their indoctrination earlier. Then they went home to Dublin, looking glamorous and culturally fulfilled.
Another talking point has been the special festival menu at White’s Hotel, where the standard of food through the week has been as good as one could hope to find anywhere in Ireland. The big menu has gone completely festal. Nobody quite knows whose operatic taste it reflects, but I have overheard a few choleric argument on the lines of “How dare they list something called ‘Ham Steak Mozart,’ or ‘Mutton Chop Maria Stuart’ or ‘Kidneys Verdi’ or – biggest blasphemy of them all – ‘Calve’s [sic] Liver Tosca’?”
On this particular theme I stand aloof in gigantic ignorance, but I must admit to playing the favourite on White’s menu, which I have not yet tasted. It’s the item listed as “Rarely Toast!”
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