The Arts Review​

High Society. Image by Pamela Raith **** It’s almost impossible to convey how popular High Society was when it premiered in 1956. With music and lyrics by Cole Porter, book by Arthur Kopit, based on the play The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry (made into a hugely popular movie in 1940), its star power of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly was enough to guarantee success. The nearest modern equivalent would be if Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, with both having the musica

The Rose of Castile. Image uncredited. ***** It might be a 19th-century opera, but under Heather Hadrill’s excellent direction, Michael William Balfe’s The Rose of Castile gets a generational facelift. The Irishman’s 1857 opera, chosen for the inaugural Wexford Festival Opera in 1951, transformed into a 1920s Hal Roach, Laurel and Hardy-style comedy. A Depression-era love story of queens and commoners, flappers and disguises, comic misunderstandings and political intrigue tha

Much Ado About Nothing. Image, uncredited. ** The second of two pocket operas celebrating Irish composers at Wexford Festival Opera 2026, Charles Villiers Stanford’s 1901 adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing is much loved but little revived. Libretto by Julian Sturgis again confirming why no one would want to be a virtuous woman in an opera. Unsubstantiated accusations enough to declare the lovesick Hero (soprano Victoria Harley) guilty till proven innocent. Com