Wexford Opera House launches

architects' rendering of opera house

architects' rendering of opera house

It would have been tough to miss all the coverage over the weekend of the fabulous new Wexford Opera House opening! First there was Pat Kenny & the Late Late crew broadcasting live from the new venue on Friday, then a feature by Irish Times architecture critic Frank McDonald:

The new opera house, with 7,235sq m of floor space, is three times larger than the old theatre, but although its flytower rises to the equivalent of eight storeys, it is barely visible above the ridge-line of High Street. Thus, the “surprise and delight of discovery”, as McGahon puts it, is still there.

The smart-looking foyer leads up to a much larger atrium that links the three levels of the auditorium. Box-balustered staircases in dark Canadian walnut are offset against white walls, creating a great space for people-watching – a stage set for the flâneur before and after performances.

[…]

THE NEW THREE-TIERED auditorium is a revelation. With its walls, ceiling, floors and bow-shaped balconies entirely clad in dark walnut (from sustainably managed forests), it almost seems to be hewn out of a huge block of timber. It has a cave-like quality, which is slightly off-putting until you get used to it.

Keith Williams likens this extraordinary interior to a stringed instrument.

“We echoed the sensuous curves of a cello to make this room,” he says. “Even the curved steel lighting bridges are analogous to the technical bits of the cello.

The new space looks set to be a triumph for the architects and the OPW involved on the project, and will set off the Wexford Opera festival in style when it launches on 16 October with the opeara ‘Snehurochka, The Snow Maiden‘ (already fully sold out!)

Getting your Fringe on

My highlight of the autumn kicks off with the Fringe Festival launching this Saturday! Over the years I’ve seen lots of productions, from brilliant to disastrous (more of the former and less of the latter), but I’m really excited this year about the staging of events in the Iveagh Gardens and the programme of street theatre (especially the opera Bastien and Bastienne). It’s Wolfgang Hoffman’s swan song after four years of running the festival, and the lineup looks like another stellar mix of theatre, dance, visual art and music.

MA programme alumnae Jenny Jennings is Programme Director for the Fringe and was interviewed in Saturday’s Irish Times about the upcoming festival and its drive to highlight new Irish talent:

Programme director Jennifer Jennings says that the strength of this year’s Irish element of the programme is more than accidental. It is a strategic part of Dublin Fringe Festival’s development over the past few years, and one that both Jennings and the festival’s outgoing artistic director, Wolfgang Hoffman, have been committed to fostering.

“We work as a platform for new artists,” Jennings explains. “I suppose you could say we are a producing partner, giving support ‘in lieu’ to emerging artists – from inviting them to use office facilities to giving them a place in the festival programme to, more recently, providing workshops for developing work.”

(yay Jenny!)

The Fringe website looks great too, with blogs and reviews (although it’d be great if they’d add an rss feed). This year tickets can be purchased from Filmbase and the Iveagh Gardens box office located on Hatch Street– the full programme pdf can be downloaded here.

holidays

The blog (including job postings) will be quiet for a few weeks while I’m on my holidays– hopefully seeking out better weather than we’ve had the last few days! Until September…

Berlusconi tampers with Truth

In other fascinating, hilarious yet somewhat disturbing news: minions attached to Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi have taken the initiative to cover up the nipple of a nude figure (‘Truth’) in a reproduction of a Tiepolo painting which hangs behind the minister during press conferences, as reported in the Guardian:

Slap in the middle of the painting is a neat, round female breast. During press conferences, as a commentator writing for the daily La Stampa noted, the breast floats above the prime minister’s head “like a halo”. This, it was felt, was too much for the sensibilities of a nation that – long before Berlusconi came along – had been feasting its eyes on half-naked Magdalenes and Minervas, not to mention the blatantly erotic statuary of Antonio Canova. Tiepolo’s breast, with attendant nipple, had to go.

Photos taken of the most recent press conference at Palazzo Chigi show the central figure has been retouched. An extra fold of clothing has appeared that covers the offending breast.

Berlusconi’s chief spin doctor, the junior minister Paolo Bonaiuti, told Corriere della Sera it was “an initiative of those on the staff of the prime minister who take care of Berlusconi’s image”. He went on: “That breast [and] that nipple ended up right in the shots the news bulletins used [for coverage of] the press conferences.”

He added that the prime minister’s image advisers feared that such a sight might offend the sensibilities of some television viewers.

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IMMA’s collections in crisis

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Part of the Tain tapestry series by Louis le Brocquy, one of the works currently suffering from poor storage conditions

A Tain tapestry by Louis le Brocquy, one of the IMMA works suffering from poor storage conditions

IMMA’s storage crisis made the front page of the Irish Times over the weekend, as a report obtained by the IT through Freedom of Information detailed the extent of damage that’s been done to the permanent collection due to inadequate storage facilities. This is the second revelation in recent months of serious mismanagement of national collections (following a damning audit of the National Museum’s collections by the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General). The five-year-old IMMA report, authored by collections curator Catherine Marshall, details buckling of artworks, prints adhering to glass, and bloom appearing on metal sculptures– such damage making the works in storage ‘dangerous to handle’ unless absolutely necessary.

A second piece in the IT continued the IMMA story further:

Imma’s own on-site stores at its home at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham (RHK) were crammed with artworks, constituting a serious hazard as they could not be evacuated in the event of a fire and had no proper environmental controls to protect fragile works of art. With well over 1,000 works in its permanent collection by then, the vast bulk was being housed in “temporary” and “interim” warehouses and stores sourced off-site by the Office of Public Works (OPW), none of which were really suitable for storing art.

So critical had the storage situation become that Imma was forced to store works in a shipping container in the car park. The use of the shipping container was described as an emergency solution. But the “emergency” lasted four years. In September 2007, Imma’s director Enrique Juncosa wrote to Sean Benton, the chair of the OPW, again highlighting its storage problems.

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