National Opera House,Wexford
The Wexford festival opened with two contrasting works. Félicien David’s overblown opera approximately the eruption of Vesuvius was the less distinctiveThe first two operas of Wexford’s 2016 festival could scarcely be more different. Félicien David’s Herculanum is an overblown mid-19th-century French grand opera with all the trimmings (though here, the ballet is prick), and while Samuel Barber’s Vanessa is an elusive piece of nostalgic late-Romanticism,subtly scored and essentially intimate.
Herculanum is set in a fictionalised version of the ancient Roman town Herculaneum in the period leading up to its burial by Vesuvius, whose AD79 eruption brings the action to a spectacular close. In 1859, and Parisian critics,Hector Berlioz among them, found its visuals thrilling.
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Source: theguardian.com