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Composer John Corigliano to attend 58th Wexford Festival Opera

Artistic Director of Wexford Festival Opera, David Agler, is delighted to announce the attendance of Composer, John Corigliano and Librettist, William Hoffman at the European Premiere of their grand-buffa opera, ‘The Ghosts of Versailles’ on October 21, 2009.

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This production, which opens the 58th Wexford Festival Opera, is a new performing version of the original opera, initially commissioned by the New York Metropolitan Opera, which had it’s premiere in 1991.  At the time, journalists across the globe were generous with their praise for this remarkably tuneful contemporary opera.  One such review said, ‘Corigliano and Hoffman received a deafening, rapturous standing ovation. The Ghosts of Versailles achieved on its first night the kind of popular triumph that composers, librettists and opera companies hardly dare even fantasize about these days’. - Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times

Due to its phenomenal success in 1991, The Metropolitan Opera were anxious to produce the opera again, however, Corigliano and Hoffman, felt that ‘Ghosts’ would benefit from ‘focusing’ before giving it another staging.  This new performing version was set to be produced at the Met as part of their 2008 season, however due to budget cuts, the production was postponed.  Enter Wexford Festival Opera.  Long time friends and colleagues, David Agler and Jim Robinson, Artistic Director Opera Theatre Saint Louis, had been looking for an opera to co-produce and decided that ‘The Ghosts of Versailles’ was the perfect opportunity.  Saint Louis hosted the World Premiere in June of this year to great acclaim.

Commenting on Mr. Corigliano’s decision to attend the opening at Wexford Festival Opera, Artistic Director, David Agler said, ‘It is often said in Wexford that we have ‘de-Composers’ rather than ‘Composers’.  Rarely do our audiences and artistic teams have the opportunity to converse with the creative minds behind the operas we produce.  We are honoured by Mr. Corigliano’s and Mr. Hoffman’s attendance and hope they will enjoy the rare experience that is Wexford and Wexford Festival Opera.’ 

John Corigliano, known as one of America’s greatest living composers, has a rich and varied body of work.  He is probably best known as the Oscar Award winning Composer in ‘Best Original Film Score’ catagory for ‘The Red Violin’ and is currently finalizing work on this latest film score for the film ‘The Edge of Darkness’ starring Mel Gibson, due to be released in 2010. He is also a multi Grammy Award winner and a Pulitzer Prize winner. To learn more about this amazing composer and his work, visit. http://www.johncorigliano.com and/or for more information on ‘The Ghosts of Versailles’ visit http://www.schirmer.com.

Just before the world-premiere of ‘The Ghosts of Versailles’ in Saint Louis last June, Mr. Corigliano had this to say about his new performing version.

Composer note:  Ghosts Returns

For many years after the glorious premiere of The Ghosts of Versailles, I have always felt that my opera was haunted by its spectacular production. People associated it with Prokofiev’s War and Peace - a work that could not exist without the grandest and most expensive mounting. So, like War and Peace, most opera houses thought The Ghosts of Versailles almost impossible to produce.

My collaborator, William Hoffman, and I always felt that the opera would benefit from being seen through a closer lens. A more economical production and casting scheme would focus the audience on the true nature of the work: that is, that while The Ghosts is, in part, an entertaining buffa, it is also a serious meditation on history and change: specifically, on how change comes about both in politics and in art. Mid-century modernists at their most fundamentalist demanded that we destroy, not merely rethink, the past to forge a new future: a demand of which the guillotine makes a terrible and perfect symbol. But our view of art was that change could come by embracing the past (the opposed worlds of the commoner Beaumarchais and the regal Marie Antoinette) and moving into the future (as did that couple, finally united, in our opera.)

The terrible World Wars that fired the angst and destruction that obsessed the Modernists have been replaced by a more evolutionary view of change. Leningrad has become St. Petersburg again without a shot being fired. Musicians and artists in the 21st century are no longer chained to the severe and limited point of view of the 20th century, despite the antique views of some living musicians and artists of the past.

Perhaps this message will be clearer in this new version. The Met’s introduction of The Ghosts of Versailles was one of the high points of my artistic life. Still, this smaller, focused production may demonstrate – as well as its practicality – more of what the work itself has to say. I can hardly wait.

— John Corigliano
May, 2009

Mr. Corigliano - We can hardly wait too!  We look forward to welcoming him to Wexford!

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