THE KILRUSH OPERA SOCIETY
“Phantoms of the Opera”
OPERA IN RURAL IRELAND by Nicholas Braithwaite (RICORDIANA April 1966)
In the west of Co. Clare, not far from where the Shannon opens into the Atlantic and just a few miles down the road from the grave of the Lily of Killarney, is a town called Kilrush: here every Whitsun week the Kilrush Opera Society presents a Festival of Grand Opera. Kilrush has a population of some 2,800 and each year spends about £3,000 on its festival. Four days before opening night the Mars Theatre (the town’s cinema) has not even a true stage, nor any of the other appurtenances of an opera house. Yet 12 days later not only have all these been provided, but there have been eight performances of operas such as Tosca, Rigoletto and Carmen. The producer, Harry Powell-Lloyd, calls it ‘a modern miracle’; and indeed one cannot fail to be amazed at all that is achieved there each year.
My first impressions of Kilrush were slightly depressing; grey rainy day, grey houses, and a general feeling that the area was none too well off. But the next day dawned bright and beautiful, with a cattle market going on in the extraordinarily wide main street, which has a terrace of Georgian houses down one side. This street leads to the harbour, which provides a most romantic picture in the evening when the tide is in-a boat swinging at its anchor (Kilrush used to be a fishing port), the sun low in the sky and a house on the promontory,
silhouetted against the evening light. If you walk along the road to Cappa, one-and-a-half miles away and Kilrush’s deep water harbour, you get the most magnificent view across the Estuary to Scatteray Island (with seven churches and a population of two!) and to Co. Kerry on the far shore. This is most beautiful countryside, with its incredible colours – greens, deep golds and browns – irradiating gentleness and warmth, and a sense of peace.
The opera season is run by a highly enthusiastic and highly efficient local committee, and the basis of the society is the local amateur chorus, who possess fine singing voices. Last summer one of the operas was Wallace’s Maritana, and the singing of the Angelus Chorus would have stood out in any company. The principals mostly come from this side of the Irish Channel – our two casts for Tosca in 1964 included Victoria Elliot, David Parker, Geoffrey Chard, and Veronica Dunne (from Dublin), Edward By1es, and Gwyn Griffiths – as do the producer, Harry Powell-Lloyd, and the conductor (myself). The orchestra, which usually numbers about 20 to24,is made up of professionals from all over Ireland.
Naturally enough, the opera seasons lose money (the Mars Theatre seats only about 600) and the committee spends the rest of the year making up the deficit in every way it can. They do occasionally get financial help from outside sources, notably Guinness, who seem to be behind every artistic venture in Ireland. Work usually starts at the turn of the year, when the chorus begin rehearsals and the committee start engaging the overseas artists. In the week or two before going over to Kilrush, I rehearse with the singers within range of London to save precious time when we get there. About ten days before the first night I go over to start work with the local principals and chorus; the producer generally arrives a few days later, and then the singers. In the few days remaining we have to get two complete operas rehearsed, an orchestra assembled, housed and rehearsed, and the stage built.
Then the stage staff move in. First they build a wooden framework for the stage, extending the six-foot stagelet into the auditorium to about three times its original size; next they build the proscenium arch and hang the curtain, then the supports for the scenery (still being painted, to Harry Powell-Lloyd’s designs) which they then hang. After this they have to rig up and connect the lighting equipment. All this has to be done by the first dress rehearsal, on the Friday night (we open on the Sunday). Because there is no wing space, no back stage area, and no fly gallery, the sets for the two operas have to be interchangeable: we were thinking of doing Don Pasquale and Nabucco this year, but when we realised that ‘Va pensiero’ would be sung not by the waters of Babylon but in Don Pasquale’s drawing-room we decided that Traviata would pair up with Pasquale rather better.
While these stage-building activities are going on, the rest of us are rehearsing in sitting-rooms around the town, coming together with the chorus for the big production rehearsals in the evenings. Then on the Thursday evening the orchestra arrives and I disappear to rehearse them, surfacing only at the dress rehearsals on the Friday and Saturday evenings. This can be awkward: last year the Rigoletto and the Don Cesar de Bazan (Maritana) were not able to arrive until two hours before I started rehearsing with the orchestra. The orchestra is a fantastically hard working group: last summer we had six orchestral rehearsals and two dress rehearsals. When we were doing Tosca, with only two orchestral rehearsals, I gave at the beginning of the first the most Scarpia-like down beat I could muster for the opening chords. An extraordinary noise came from my little band of 20-odd. I stopped and said I didn’t think this was quite right, whereupon one of the players replied: ‘Ah sure, it’ll be the missing instruments, d’ye see?’ Later on, in ‘Vissi d’arte’, we came to that bar which has about 48 beats in it, and things started to faIl apart. As we had lost the violins some bars back anyway, I stopped and said that perhaps I had better explain; a voice from the violins spoke up: ‘Ah no, that’s all right – we’ll follow you!’
With a general feeling of slightly surprised disbelief we do get as far as the dress rehearsals (still going on at 2 or 3 a.m., with everybody getting a bit frayed at the edges, and an audience of nuns from the nearby convent) and eventually to the first nights, usually well received by audience and critics alike. The audience for the festival is mostly drawn from Kilrush itself and the surrounding 20 miles or so of countryside. But nearly every night there are one or two parties from elsewhere in Ireland: members of the many similar opera societies come to see what Kilrush is doing. And this, paradoxically, is one of the most wonderful things about Kilrush – that it is by no means the only group of this kind, although in some ways the most remarkable in the scale of its efforts in relation to its isolation and lack of facilities. The expenditure of £1 per head of the population makes the 6d. rate over here look rather pathetic. These opera societies, ranging from the tiniest (with local singers and piano) to the international events at Dublin and Wexford, are creating a vast popular interest in opera throughout Ireland.
This piece was originally written by Nicholas Braithwaite, son of the eminent conductor Warwick Braithwaite who had served as chorus master and later conductor with the O’Mara Touring Company – a slightly earlier version of Arthur Hammond – and worked with all the main touring and regional companies in the UK. Paddy Brennan recalls appearing in the chorus of “Carmen” which was conducted for the DGOS by Warwick Braithwaite in 1963. He retained two huge memories of that season – the sitzprobe in SFX Hall on the day JFK was assassinated and Warwick introducing him to the story of Joseph O’Mara over multiple sustained chats between rehearsing; for him it proved a Damascene moment. Meanwhile Nicky followed in his father’s footsteps and Paddy was later to hear him conduct in both Limerick and Kilrush, meeting for a chat and a few pints on a number of those occasions.
Early Kilrush Opera Society programmes can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/KDHSCountyClare/photos?tab=album&album_id=189606137330
Coming soon – Pauline Tinsley recorderd in Kilrush 1966
Opera in Ireland 