Wexford Revives Balfe's 'The Rose of Castile' for 75th Anniversary

Wexford Festival Opera has staged a new, abridged production of Michael William Balfe's 1857 opera "The Rose of Castile" to mark its 75th anniversary — an opera the festival first presented in 1951 and reprised in 1991. Balfe lived in Wexford during his early childhood, which helps explain the work's place in the festival's history.

The opera was once a phenomenon. After its 1857 London premiere, its breezy plot and accessible melodies made it one of the most popular operas in the English-speaking world, with thousands of performances up to 1914. Then it virtually disappeared. Today, most people who know the title at all know it from James Joyce's references in "Ulysses" — including the joke: "Which opera do you associate with a railway line? The Rose of Castile."

Why did the opera vanish?

The libretto, by Augustus Glossop Harris and Edmond Falconer, is firmly of its time — Victorian sensibilities, bourgeois values, and tightly corsetted morality. The convoluted plot has genuine comic potential: a queen disguised as a commoner disguising herself as a queen, a muleteer mistaken for Don Sebastian, and the queen's cousin Don Pedro scheming for the throne. But the reviewer notes Balfe did little to exploit it, and the piece lacks the fizz of a Rossini or Donizetti comedy. The Wexford audience was mildly amused; laughter was only occasional and low-key.

The music, though, remains attractive. Light, tuneful arias, duets, and ensembles pepper the score, even if few stick in the memory beyond the Act Two laughing trio "I am not the Queen, ha, ha!"

What does the narrator change?

Director Heather Hadrill reset the action in 1929 Spain, drawing a parallel between the opera's monarchy-versus-military dynamic and General de Rivera's dictatorship under a constitutional monarchy. Her key innovation was a spoken, non-singing narrator modeled on Walter Winchell, who in 1929 became the world's first gossip columnist at the New York Daily Mirror. The device kept the audience abreast of the abridged plot's disguises and counter-disguises — though it also gave the evening the appearance of an operetta.

Peter McCamley played Winchell with scruffy clothes, a heavy Brooklyn drawl, and all the stereotypical behavior of a New York reporter, opening the show and returning with regular updates.

Lisa Krügel's low-budget designs — a few tables and chairs suggesting a nightclub or bar, a raised platform for a throne, three large golden picture frames, and two giant playing cards referencing Elvira and Manuel — provided a functional backdrop, enriched by Cian Redmond's lighting.

How did the cast deliver?

Musical director and pianist Rebecca Warren drew lively, energetic performances, supporting the singers lightly while playing up the menace behind Don Pedro's smile.

Soprano Eleri Gwilym, impressive last year in Zemlinsky's "The Dwarf," showed a very different side as Queen Elvira — spirited and playful, ping-ing out high notes and bright coloratura with evident enjoyment. Tenor Eamonn Walsh's Manuel, the disguised King of Leon, leaned on deliberately overstated gestures and smooth lyric singing; his love duet with Gwilym, "Twas rank and fame that tempted thee," was a highlight of the show.

Baritone Rory Musgrave gave Don Pedro an exaggerated swagger that ruled out genuine menace, while showing off an attractive timbre and sensitive phrasing. Mezzo-soprano Erin Fflur brought a darker, weightier voice to the confidante Donna Carmen; Myrnna Tennant played the straight-laced courtier Beatrix; and Jonah Halton and Conor Cooper went for laughs as Don Pedro's sidekicks, Don Sallust and Don Florio.

The reviewer admits the work is too light and whimsical for personal taste, but concluded: "it was not such a bad way to spend an afternoon." For a festival built on rarities, the revival proves why this piece mattered — and why it stopped mattering.