Donizetti's  Maria Padilla

Wexford Festival, Ireland, October 2009

Photographs by Patrick Redmond, courtesy of the Wexford Festival.

The Team

Maria Padilla- Barbara Quintiliani

Don Pedro - Marco Caria

Don Ruiz di Padilla- Adriano Graziani

Ines Padilla - Ketevan Kemoklidze

Don Ramiro - Vittorio Prato

Francesca - Annie Gill

Don Luigi - Paulo Paulillo

Don Alfonso di Pardo - Bradley Smoak

Conductor - David Agler

Director - Marco Gandini

Designer - Mauro Tinti

Costumes - Silvia Aymonino

Andrew Clark in the Financial Times found it the most polished and stylish of this year's Wexford operas and was generally positive about both music and staging. Hugh Canning in the Sunday Times was largely of the same opinion, although decried the director forcing a "happy end", while George Hall in The Stage thought the direction could have been stronger and design and costume "eccentric and unhelpful". "But the piece hits home under David Agler’s confident baton".

For the Irish press, both Dick O'Riordan (Sunday Business Post online) and Michael Dervan ( Irish Times) singled out the singing as the major strength of the production. O'Riordan commenting "Quintiliani as Maria Padilla soared spectacularly time after time, but her acting was sometimes static".   An article on the star Barbara Quintiliani by Andrea Smith can be found here.

Maria and Don Ruiz 

Ines and Maria

Bianca and Don Luigi

Don Pedro and Maria 

Don Pedro and Don Ramiro 

The ensemble 

© Donizetti Society and contributors, 2004-2009