National Opera House (O’Reilly Theatre), Wexford, 28/10/2026.
Orchestra and Chorus of Wexford Festival Opera; Francesco Cilluffo (conductor); Leyla Gu (soprano); Joseph Calleja (tenor); Jihoon Kim (bass); Jolyon Loy (baritone); Hannah O'Brien (soprano); Yu Shao (tenor); Meilir Jones (bass-baritone); Joshua Baxter (tenor)
This penultimate report from this year’s Wexford Festival Opera covers Mascagni’s ‘Iris’ from the performance of 28th October in the O’Reilly Theatre, the main theatre of the National Opera House. The opera was sung in Italian with English surtitles. Two years ago, Mascagni’s ‘Le Maschere’ was my introduction to the festival and my first Wexford review. Although a first hearing, I knew that ‘Iris’ would be a very different opera, less preachy for one thing. Add to the mix Maltese star tenor Joseph Calleja, and I was keyed up for an evening of verismo tempered by a degree of surrealism, directed by none other than the festival’s Artistic Director, Rosetta Cucchi. Design comprised sets by Tiziano Santi, costumes by Claudia Pernigotti, lighting by Daniele Naldi and video projection by Thomas Achitz. Four dancers from Wexford School of Ballet & Performing Arts and three other dancers were choreographed by Libby Seward, and there was also an aerialist (reminding me of ‘The Galloping Cure’ this summer). As with ‘Le Maschere’ 2 years ago, the Orchestra and Chorus of Wexford Festival Opera were conducted by Francesco Cilluffo.
Set in a mythical Japan, the opera opens with a spooky pre-dawn scene, while the young innocent girl Iris (Italy-trained Chinese soprano Leyla Gu) sleeps. As the sun rises, she wakes from a nightmare, in which monsters menaced her sick doll. An early choral climax, the first of many, is a ‘Hymn to the Sun’, to whose healing rays she lifts her doll. She lives with her blind father ‘Il Cieco’ (Korean bass Jihoon Kim) in a state of mutual dependence. Spying on her are two unsavoury characters, the rake Osaka (Joseph Calleja) and the pimp Kyoto (British-Irish baritone Jolyon Loy). In a lovely interlude, she tends to her flowers (a small female chorus) while her father prays. Osaka and Kyoto plan to kidnap her away to Edo’s red-light district. To distract her and entice her away from her father’s protection, they put on a lavish street entertainment of a puppet show with music and dance. In the show, Osaka plays Jor, the son of the sun-god, rescuing the lonely maiden Dhia (Irish soprano Hannah O'Brien), with whom Iris empathises and even identifies. During a ballet sequence, she is snatched away. Her father calls out in vain for her, falls down and is helped up by a passing haberdasher (Chinese tenor Yu Shao), who finds money and a note left by Kyoto, saying Iris has left for the brothels of Yoshiwara. Imagining himself abandoned by an ungrateful immoral daughter, he asks to be taken to Edo so he can punish her. In Act II, at the brothel, where she is clad in finery, Osaka is overcome by her beauty and desires her for himself: she resists his advances. He gives up and Kyoto decides to exhibit her on the balcony for passing trade. Her father appears, curses her and flings mud. Distraught, she jumps down into the open sewer. In Act III, the pre-dawn ragpickers (Yu Shao again, Welsh bass-baritone and WFO regular Meilir Jones, and English tenor Joshua Baxter) come across her unconscious body and, believing her dead, start helping themselves to the fine fabric. She regains consciousness and scares them off. She realises how her fate has been wrought by the selfish egotism of three men, Osaka’s desire, Kyoto’s greed and her father’s possessive ‘love’. As the sun rises, the opera comes full-circle, reprising the ‘Hymn to the Sun’. In a huge climax of sound and light, she is transfigured, carried aloft towards the sun and the eternal realms, transformed for eternity as the flower that bears her name.
The music did not disappoint. As well as the climactic moments, there was an ebb-and-flow and an underlying logic and structure on which Francesco Cilluffo kept a tight rein, so that there was no sense of longueur. That acknowledged, it is undeniable that the visual elements were so stimulatingly next-level as to virtually preclude any drift of attention. The Act I puppet show was extraordinary, featuring framework puppets made and operated by Caoimhe Dunn, Eddie McCarthy and Dominic Palmer, larger video projection of similar puppets, the choreographed dancers, and the aerialist Hannah Scully performing elegant manoeuvres high over the others, suspended from two long “silken” sashes. Unforgettable. As indeed was the final transfigurative scene. There were numerous touches of design that appealed too. For example, for much of Act II, Iris is captive inside a bell-shaped cage, whose structure and appearance is echoed by the farthingale worn by the other girls. Her femininity is her captivity. Great dramatic irony is achieved by projected images of feminine beauty at the start of Act III, set in the sewer.
Leyla Gu as Iris, as Rosetta Cucchi had mentioned at the Gala Concert, was perfect for the role. Tall, slender and elegant, she moved with simple unaffected childlike grace, and sang with a voice that did not lack power across the full tonal range, yet exuded gentleness and innocence. A character who has failed nobody, but has been failed by everybody, remains uncorrupted. Excellent performance.
Joseph Calleja’s character Osaka is, by any measure, a baddie. But that delicious tenor voice, that fails to seduce Iris, seduced at least half the Wexford audience. He is a tragic figure because he doesn’t “get it”. He cannot see beyond the beautiful exterior to the even more beautiful human being. His shallow goal to possess her physically is doomed. There is the dawn of realisation at the end of Act II, just when it is too late. Another captivating performance.
A third inspired piece of casting was Jihoon Kim as ‘Il Cieco’. A rich dark bass voice conveyed the shrunken horizons of blindness and the initial anguish of Iris’ disappearance, but also allowed for the dramatic irony that a father best placed to “see” her beauty as a human being is in reality only too ready to believe the worst of her. Another subtly tragic performance.
This production of ‘Iris’, in terms of the scale of multi-disciplinary creative input and the intensity of the audience experience, must objectively rank as ‘a’ (if not ‘the’) highlight of this year’s 75th Anniversary Festival. And, while this reviewer generally derives greatest subjective pleasure from particular details of unforgettable excellence, I happily acknowledge that this production is superbly unforgettable. Full marks from me.
Photo credit: Padraig Grant
Weblinks: https://www.wexfordopera.com/programme/festival-programme/iris
https://www.youtube.com/live/iqBiNPc7tI4 (beware ludicrous subtitles)