Troubled Wexford

The new Wexford Opera House has certainly raised the profile of opera in Ireland. You cannot argue with a prize-winning building that is one of just four large purpose-built opera auditoriums in these islands, alongside Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and the Wales Millennium Centre. Built with Irish taxpayers’ money, it would be a sick Irish joke to mothball the place within a year of its grand successful opening. Yet the Wexford Festival’s obsession with traditional dress-code (black tie, long frocks) adds to the feeling that opera belongs to a class with alien tastes. Meanwhile, even the Abbey Theatre — which scoffs the lion’s share of Irish performing-arts subsidy — has no permanent ensemble. Dublin’s appetite for theatre is not that great, and the Abbey, like our National Theatre, treats actors as casual temps the way dockowners used to treat dockers.

The Irish economy is in a tailspin, Wexford is plastered with estate agents’ signs.