Wednesday 22nd October 2014 will see the opening of the 63rd Wexford Festival, and three new productions of three unfamiliar works will be unveiled. Wexford has been presenting these unfamiliar works now for 63 years, and has become part of our lives, and yearly routine. But do we ever stop to look back and think about how, and indeed why it all started ?
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| Dr. T. J. Walsh (Centenary Record, 1958) |
There are many different stories of how the Wexford Festival started. Therefore I think the best way to dispel myths and fables, is to refer to the article penned by the festival founder Dr Tom Walsh himself, for the 1958 Centenary Record, a book published for the centenary of Wexford town's twin churches.
If the idea of the Wexford Festival can be said to have suggested itself at any precise time, it occurred on a spring afternoon on Foyle'e Bookshop, on Charing Cross Road, London in 1951. There I came across an old programme of the Aldeburgh Festival. I was vaguely aware that Aldeburgh was a small town on the Suffolk coast, that Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears lived there, and that it was close to Ipswich where Gainsborough has spent part of his early life. What attracted my interest however was not the geography or artistic associations of Aldeburgh, but a halftone photograph on the cover of the programme depicting the launching of a lifeboat.
Earlier in 1951, a group called, rather ponderously, the Wexford Opera Study Circle, which had been formed the previous November with Compton Mackenzie giving the inaugural address, had decided to produce an opera in Wexford. Here was a photograph, as typical of Rosslare Harbour, or Kilmore, or of Wexford as it was of Aldeburgh. Festivals evidently did not require the wealth and magnificence of large cities as essential backgrounds to their success. If Aldeburgh could have its festival, could not Wexford transform its opera production into one too ?
Later that evening I travelled down to Denchworth in Berkshire where I was spending the night with Compton Mackenzie, and after dinner, drinking cherry brandy before a log fire in his library, I asked him for his opinion. He was most enthusiastic, promised to give any practical help he could towards its success ; a promise he has since made good a hundred fold, and so the Wexford Festival was born.
I returned to Wexford full of optimism, and found - reality, for, if Comptom Mackenzie and myself were confident of success we were almost the only ones. However a committee was formed and a circular was issued setting forth our plans, and stating that if five hundred subscriptions of one guinea each were received by May first, we would hold a Festival early in the forthcoming November. By May, we had received about two hundred guineas and a meeting was called. About twenty people attended. I cannot remember if I was in the chair, though I think I probably was. I do remember proposing that although our advance subscriptions were much below our original target we should still hold our Festival. This was seconded by Mr. Seamus O'Dwyer, who was honorary secretary to the committee, and put to the meeting. To a man everybody voted against it, on the perfectly sensible grounds that there was obviously insufficient interest in the project to make it a success. Whereupon, I decided we should hold the Festival anyhow !
Our venture being launched I called upon His Lordship, Most Reverend Dr. Staunton* and asked him to become our Patron, to which he graciously consented. Compton Mackenzie was naturally invited to be President, and he too accepted.
For our programme, we decided upon one opera. I ascertained that the Radio Eireann Light Orchestra would be available to us and so an orchestral concert was added. There would be two recitals, some puppet performances by the Dublin Marionette Group, exhibitions of paintings, and of historical manuscripts, prints and maps of the county, an operatic exhibition of old prints and opera bills, and personal belongings of M.W. Balfe, and three lectures.
The principal feature of the Festival then as now, was opera. I had chosen Balfe's Rose of Castille for the following reasons, it was melodious and so would attract an Irish operatic audience, the composer had spent part of his early life in Wexford, it was seldom if ever performed. From this latter principle, as with many others in connection with the Festival such as the time of year in which it is held, our policy has never varied. Concerning the presentation of opera I held some very decided views. I believed that the principal singers should not only be able to sing but should bear a reasonable resemblance to the characters that they were portraying. I believed that an opera should be designed and produced with just as much care as an ordinary straight play, and I believed that the chorus should know its work so well, that it could go through a performance without once having to watch the conductor.
I do not mean to suggest that these views were original, they just did not seem to be universal. Nor were all these aims achieved in the first year. The chorus however, entirely amateur, entirely local set a standard which was unprecedented in Ireland, a standard that has risen with each succeeding Festival.
Time passed quickly in that summer of 1951, helped on by periods of elation when things seemed to be going well, retarded by bouts of depression whenever we stopped to think how little interest the Festival was creating. In fact, thinking back on it the reaction of most of the townspeople was to look upon the whole business as a joke, and outside Wexford, nobody had even heard of us. But on October eleventh all this was changed.
That day I was handed a copy of the London Times. Turning to the entertainments column I discovered at the bottom of a rather caustic criticism of Orson Well's Othello, which had opened in London the previous evening, right at the top in large print I read "The Wexford Festival. Operas by Balfe and Ravel"**. Underneath in a seven inch column London was told all about the forthcoming Festival.
I had scarcely finished reading when the telephone commenced to ring. It appeared that the London offices of our National dailies had telephoned Dublin to ask what was all this about a Festival at Wexford, of which The Times had been informed but of which they had not. This was Dublin calling and would we please give them something. They will never know how pleased we were to do so.
From that moment journalists began to arrive in Wexford by every train, where, to quote one paper they found us "surprised but unabashed at the amount of interest aroused throughout the country"
Perhaps we felt proudest of all of an editorial in the Evening Herald which said: "The remarkable feature of the event is the silence, almost secrecy, with which the plans were conceived and brought to fruition. Too often have we trumpeted about our inherent love of music and culture, but the only suitable notes to comfort our efforts in most cases would be The Last Post ".
So the first Festival was a success. Today after seven Festivals we can look back with quiet satisfaction to ten operas, performed with singers such as Afro Poli, Josef Traxel, Nicola Monti, Franco Calabrese, Esther Rethy, Marco Rothmueller, Elizabeth Lindermeier, Paolo Pedani and Graziella Sciutti, to recitalists, such as Leon Goosens, Campoli, Gina Bachauer, Segovia and Cor de Groot, to over fifty films, to important exhibitions, to orchestral concerts, to plays, and - to an atmosphere of Irish friendliness that is unique among festivals the world over.
* Dr James Staunton, Bishop of Ferns, 1938 - 1963.
** Reference to L'Enfant et les Sortileges, presented by the Dublin Marionette Group.
If the idea of the Wexford Festival can be said to have suggested itself at any precise time, it occurred on a spring afternoon on Foyle'e Bookshop, on Charing Cross Road, London in 1951. There I came across an old programme of the Aldeburgh Festival. I was vaguely aware that Aldeburgh was a small town on the Suffolk coast, that Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears lived there, and that it was close to Ipswich where Gainsborough has spent part of his early life. What attracted my interest however was not the geography or artistic associations of Aldeburgh, but a halftone photograph on the cover of the programme depicting the launching of a lifeboat.Earlier in 1951, a group called, rather ponderously, the Wexford Opera Study Circle, which had been formed the previous November with Compton Mackenzie giving the inaugural address, had decided to produce an opera in Wexford. Here was a photograph, as typical of Rosslare Harbour, or Kilmore, or of Wexford as it was of Aldeburgh. Festivals evidently did not require the wealth and magnificence of large cities as essential backgrounds to their success. If Aldeburgh could have its festival, could not Wexford transform its opera production into one too ?
Later that evening I travelled down to Denchworth in Berkshire where I was spending the night with Compton Mackenzie, and after dinner, drinking cherry brandy before a log fire in his library, I asked him for his opinion. He was most enthusiastic, promised to give any practical help he could towards its success ; a promise he has since made good a hundred fold, and so the Wexford Festival was born.
I returned to Wexford full of optimism, and found - reality, for, if Comptom Mackenzie and myself were confident of success we were almost the only ones. However a committee was formed and a circular was issued setting forth our plans, and stating that if five hundred subscriptions of one guinea each were received by May first, we would hold a Festival early in the forthcoming November. By May, we had received about two hundred guineas and a meeting was called. About twenty people attended. I cannot remember if I was in the chair, though I think I probably was. I do remember proposing that although our advance subscriptions were much below our original target we should still hold our Festival. This was seconded by Mr. Seamus O'Dwyer, who was honorary secretary to the committee, and put to the meeting. To a man everybody voted against it, on the perfectly sensible grounds that there was obviously insufficient interest in the project to make it a success. Whereupon, I decided we should hold the Festival anyhow !
Our venture being launched I called upon His Lordship, Most Reverend Dr. Staunton* and asked him to become our Patron, to which he graciously consented. Compton Mackenzie was naturally invited to be President, and he too accepted.
For our programme, we decided upon one opera. I ascertained that the Radio Eireann Light Orchestra would be available to us and so an orchestral concert was added. There would be two recitals, some puppet performances by the Dublin Marionette Group, exhibitions of paintings, and of historical manuscripts, prints and maps of the county, an operatic exhibition of old prints and opera bills, and personal belongings of M.W. Balfe, and three lectures.The principal feature of the Festival then as now, was opera. I had chosen Balfe's Rose of Castille for the following reasons, it was melodious and so would attract an Irish operatic audience, the composer had spent part of his early life in Wexford, it was seldom if ever performed. From this latter principle, as with many others in connection with the Festival such as the time of year in which it is held, our policy has never varied. Concerning the presentation of opera I held some very decided views. I believed that the principal singers should not only be able to sing but should bear a reasonable resemblance to the characters that they were portraying. I believed that an opera should be designed and produced with just as much care as an ordinary straight play, and I believed that the chorus should know its work so well, that it could go through a performance without once having to watch the conductor.
I do not mean to suggest that these views were original, they just did not seem to be universal. Nor were all these aims achieved in the first year. The chorus however, entirely amateur, entirely local set a standard which was unprecedented in Ireland, a standard that has risen with each succeeding Festival.
Time passed quickly in that summer of 1951, helped on by periods of elation when things seemed to be going well, retarded by bouts of depression whenever we stopped to think how little interest the Festival was creating. In fact, thinking back on it the reaction of most of the townspeople was to look upon the whole business as a joke, and outside Wexford, nobody had even heard of us. But on October eleventh all this was changed.
That day I was handed a copy of the London Times. Turning to the entertainments column I discovered at the bottom of a rather caustic criticism of Orson Well's Othello, which had opened in London the previous evening, right at the top in large print I read "The Wexford Festival. Operas by Balfe and Ravel"**. Underneath in a seven inch column London was told all about the forthcoming Festival.
I had scarcely finished reading when the telephone commenced to ring. It appeared that the London offices of our National dailies had telephoned Dublin to ask what was all this about a Festival at Wexford, of which The Times had been informed but of which they had not. This was Dublin calling and would we please give them something. They will never know how pleased we were to do so.
From that moment journalists began to arrive in Wexford by every train, where, to quote one paper they found us "surprised but unabashed at the amount of interest aroused throughout the country"
Perhaps we felt proudest of all of an editorial in the Evening Herald which said: "The remarkable feature of the event is the silence, almost secrecy, with which the plans were conceived and brought to fruition. Too often have we trumpeted about our inherent love of music and culture, but the only suitable notes to comfort our efforts in most cases would be The Last Post ".
So the first Festival was a success. Today after seven Festivals we can look back with quiet satisfaction to ten operas, performed with singers such as Afro Poli, Josef Traxel, Nicola Monti, Franco Calabrese, Esther Rethy, Marco Rothmueller, Elizabeth Lindermeier, Paolo Pedani and Graziella Sciutti, to recitalists, such as Leon Goosens, Campoli, Gina Bachauer, Segovia and Cor de Groot, to over fifty films, to important exhibitions, to orchestral concerts, to plays, and - to an atmosphere of Irish friendliness that is unique among festivals the world over.
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| Erskine Childers, Compton Mackenzie and Dr. Tom Walsh, at The Wexford Festival 1951 |
* Dr James Staunton, Bishop of Ferns, 1938 - 1963.
** Reference to L'Enfant et les Sortileges, presented by the Dublin Marionette Group.
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