RTE lyric fm to Broadcast Wexford Festival Opera's MEDEA, MARGHERITA and More

Wexford Festival Opera will once again join forces with RTÉ lyric fm, its National Media Partner, to bring Wexford to an estimated 20 million listeners via the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), as the three mainstage evening operas from WFO 2017 are broadcast in Ireland and across the world.

All three evening operas will be broadcast on the RTÉ lyric fm Opera Night programme, presented by Paul Herriott, beginning with a Live Nationwide broadcast of Medea on Saturday, 28 October, and which will also be broadcast to 10 EBU member national public radio stations across the globe, including Russia, Estonia, The Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia, and UK (deferred until 25 November.) with and estimated audience of 10 million according to the EBU.

In addition, another 10 million listeners are expected to tune in to hear the long lost opera Margharita on Saturday 11 November at 7pm via RTÉ lyric fm and EBU member radio stations in The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Romania, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Britain, Sweden and Hungary. As the Wexford production is the first to be staged since 1852, and no recording of this opera exists, this is truly a unique opportunity to hear this first opera by Jacopo Foroni.

Risurrezione by Franco Alfano will be broadcast nationwide on Saturday 4 November at 7pm on RTÉ lyric fm.

All three of these critically-acclaimed operas can be heard live on Opera Night on RTÉ lyric fm: 96-99 FM and online via www.rte.ie/lyricfm/opera-night.

The 66th Wexford Festival Opera runs until Sunday, 5 November. Tickets and full programme details on www.wexfordopera.com.

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The Programme:

MEDEA

Based on the Euripides play, Medea is one of the most notorious figures from Greek mythology, a sorceress whose main claim to fame is the event that brings down the curtain on Cherubini's opera: She murders her own children in revenge for her husband, Jason's, betrayal. Cherubini's masterpiece remains a work of which everyone has heard, famously recorded by Maria Callas, but relatively few opera lovers have actually experienced in the theatre. Medea is a fierce work, and not simply because of its subject matter. A co-production with Opera Omaha.

MARGHERITA

Following the success of Cristina, regina di Svezia at Wexford in 2013, acclaimed by many as one of the most worthwhile rediscoveries in the festival's long history, another of Jacopo Foroni's operas, his first, Margherita, premiered one year earlier than Cristina in front of the 'home' audience in Milan. It was greeted with considerable enthusiasm at the time, though like his other work, fell into obscurity after his untimely death at age 32. It is widely believed that had he lived he would have been a worthy rival to Verdi. A co-production with Oldenburghisches Staatstheater

This light-hearted opera tells the story of a rural young woman Margherita and her quest to marry her soldier-love Ernesto. This is the first staging of the opera since its premiere in Milan in 1848. This is the opera's first production since 1852. This opera has never been recorded.

RISURREZIONE

Franco Alfano is remembered today less for his own operas than for his role in completing another composer's work - Turandot, left unfinished at the time of Puccini's death. Risurrezione, the opera that brought Alfano his first taste of fame, premiered in Turin in 1904. Based upon Tolstoy's novel of the same name, Risurrezione is set in Russia and deals with the maid Katiusha and her ill-fated affair with Prince Dimitri Nekludoff.