Mercadante's Virginia

Opera House, Wexford Opera Festival, Ireland,  October 16 - 28, 2010.

Photographs by Clive Barda, courtesy of Wexford Opera Festival

Photographs from the 2010 Wexford Opera Festival's production of Mercadante's Virginia.  Michael Dervan in the Irish Times found that the setting with its mixing of ancient Rome with 21st century "mafiosi"  might sound far-fetched, but "actually worked quite smoothly. That it did was due in no small part to the fabulous emotional projection of US soprano Angela Meade’s vocally athletic Virginia".  Andrew Clark in the Financial Times  was also highly appreciative of Meade, although found the opera as a whole "a worthy, if unexceptional, evening’s entertainment". Dick O'Riordan in The Sunday Business Post Online was a bit more positive, writing that it was "a potentially great work, once you don’t expect it to be Verdi. It is lacking in nuance and subtlety, and though full of big booming arias and massive choral engagement, it never produces the killer aria that might have won it a respectable place in popular repertoire".

The Team

Virginia - Angela Meade

Icilio  - Bruno Ribiero

Appio Claudio - Ivan Magri

Marco - Gianluca Buratto

Virginio - Hugh Russell

Conductor - Carlos Izcaray

Director - Kevin Newbury

Designer - Allen Moyer

Lighting Designer - Christopher Akerlind

Choreographer - Sean Curran

The "Roman" opening

Appio

Virginia and Icilio

Virginia and Virginio

Appio and Virginia

© Donizetti Society and contributors, 2004-2010