Wexford Festival: The Magic Fountain
National Opera House (O’Reilly Theatre) Wexford 23/10/25
Orchestra and Chorus of Wexford Opera; Francesco Ciluffo (conductor); Dominick Valdés Chenes (tenor); Axelle Saint-Cirel (mezzo-soprano); Kamohelo Tsotetsi (baritone); Meilir Jones (bass-baritone); Seamus Brady (baritone).
This third report from this year’s Wexford Festival Opera deals with the third of the three full-scale stagings of a full-length opera, Delius’ ‘The Magic Fountain’, written in 1895 but not first staged until 1997, just the kind of curious rarity to be programmed at Wexford. It fits this year’s ‘Myths and Legends’ theme perfectly, with a fabled eponymous ‘Fountain of Eternal Youth’. The staging is directed by Christopher Luscombe, designed by Simon Higlett and lit by Daniele Naldi and Paolo Bonapace. The Orchestra and Chorus of Wexford Opera are conducted by Francesco Ciluffo. The opera was sung in English with English surtitles.
The protagonist, a Spanish explorer Solano (lyric tenor Dominick Valdés Chenes), is obsessed with a legend of a ‘Fountain of Eternal Youth’ located in the Florida Everglades and his ship and sceptical crew (chorus plus a solo for Northern Irish baritone currently studying at RCS Seamus Brady) are becalmed off the Florida coast. A storm blows up, the ship founders and he is cast ashore as the sole survivor, where he is discovered barely alive by a Seminole princess Watawa (French mezzo-soprano Axelle Saint-Cirel). She has him carried to the village, where he is revived. The chief Wapanacki (South African baritone Kamohelo Tsotetsi) learns of Solano’s quest for enlightenment and judges him naïve but harmless. The Fountain does exist, but is toxic to the uninitiated. Solano is undeterred. Wapanacki asks Watawa to travel first with Solano to seek guidance from the seer Talum Hadjo (Welsh bass-baritone Meilir Jones) and then, if permitted, to follow his instructions to get to the Fountain. He is aware (and Watawa makes no secret of the fact) that she has only hatred for the white men who slew all her kin. She would have no qualms about leading him to his death. They set out and Watawa alone speaks with the seer; Solano is smitten with her beauty. As they follow the upstream trail together to the source, her attitude softens and her hatred dissipates. She finally reciprocates his protestations of love and begs him not to drink from the Fountain: it is poisonous. He remains undeterred. Hoping to save him, she drinks from the Fountain and dies in his arms. Distraught, he too drinks and falls dead beside her.
Before hearing the music of this opera, and based on the Delius I knew previously, I would have been dismissive of any suggestion that he was a Wagnerian. Now I am not so sure. There is an extended, atmospheric scene-setting dawn-evoking prelude with a haunting exotic cor anglais melody, that recurs throughout the opera and has all the hallmarks of a leitmotif (though whether representing thedream of the Fountain or Watawa herself is hard to pin down – I believe the latter). The spectre of a disheartened crew trapped on an endless futile voyage and the music for the storm recall ‘The Flying Dutchman’. The music for the white-clad spirits that guard the Fountain echoed that of the Rhine Maidens. Hints of ‘Tristan’ present in the trek to the Fountain crystallise into actual quotations in the final scenes. That said, the sound world is still pure early Delius and thoroughly delicious.
The set for the ship was three large stylised sections suggestive of a hull with ropes, and a hanging ship’s lantern. When the storm struck the sections moved relative to each other and the crew moved as if flung from side-to-side, as the lantern swung. This was immensely convincing, surrealism creating realism, with the music doing the rest. The dense vegetation near the shore was evoked by hundreds of green hanging strips. Both Delius’ music and the choreography (Amy Share Kissiov) for a tribal dance at the village clearing were superb. Talum Hadjo and his shrine rose through a trapdoor out of the mist. The shimmering stream leading to the shrine extended with vanishing perspective into the distance, Translucent glistening hanging silvery strips evoked the fountain. The choreography for the Fountain spirit maidens was sweetly ethereal. The exotic (but slightly surreal) visuals made the enfolding narrative all the more engaging.
With the libretto also by Delius, there is a directness and a natural pace which the production fully exploits and which I found very satisfying, Visually, vocally and in terms of dramatic characterisation, it is hard to imagine a performer more ideally suited to the role of Watawa than Axelle and, dare I say it, yet another stunning mezzo in the “month of mezzos” that this October has been for this reviewer, with flawless messa di voce. But equally, Dominick, Kamohelo and Meilir fully inhabited their roles and delivered a performance that showed how much the company rate this opera and want to convince the WFO audiences of the same. In that, I would say, mission accomplished.
photo credit: Padraig Grant