Wexford Festival Opera, 2025
Francesco Cilluffo, Christopher Luscombe, Dominick Chenes, Axelle Saint-Cirel, Kamohelo Tsotetsi, Meilir Jones, Seamus Brady
O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 23rd October 2025
After a previous year of operas dedicated to humour and triviality, this year's Wexford Festival Opera programme suitably went for a wider balance that took in 18th, 19th and an almost 20th century opera, but covered many other centuries and millennia in the period settings of those works. There was also a measure of lightness of touch in the treatment of the overall theme of Myths & Legends, but there was a rather more solemn and reverential tone evident in Delius’s The Magic Fountain. That was clearly suggested by the spiritual awakening message of the work itself, and it consequently received a similarly respectful treatment by the director Christopher Luscombe and conductor Francesco Cilluffo. It's an approach that suits the opera and its post-Wagnerian atmosphere, evoking Tristan und Isolde in its quest for the eternal, but it couldn't help but feel a little dry and ponderous at the same time.
The opera even opens with a kind of Flying Dutchman legend in reverse. In the 16th century, aboard a ship crossing the Atlantic, Don Juan Solano dreams of finding the mythical fountain of youth and the possibility of living forever. His ship however is stuck somewhere off the coast of Florida, to the consternation of the crew. When a sudden storm dutifully casts him ashore, destroying his ship and crew in the process, it is not an adoring 'Senta' Solano meets, but a young native woman called Watawa, who does not welcome this foreign intruder. Most white men come to their lands to pillage, destroying everything in their search for gold. Watawa expects no different from Solano and his quest for the magical fountain.
But in some ways, the white man is indeed expecting it to come easy for him and have it handed to him on a plate. The tribal seer Talum Hadjo warns him however that he hasn't put in the hours of contemplation, preparation and understanding of what it means to live eternal youth, and that his goal will elude him. There is a message here about respect and veneration for those who are seen as being 'closer to nature', but there is good reason to think so and much truth in that sentiment. Those who have lived destroying and fighting nature would not have the maturity or understanding of those who have passed down knowledge from generations, respecting the power of nature, using it to their benefit without exploiting it.
The dream of finding a more closer spiritual way of living is one that appealed to Delius. Send to Florida on his father's business managing an orange plantation in 1884, the nascent composer instead used the experience to soak up the musicality of the spirituals of the African-American slave workers, the sounds and the people of the land, as well as reportedly enjoying the favours of the local native girls. The experience clearly marked him deeply and his own quest to express those discoveries in his music led to a totally unique approach and distinctive musical expression. In The Magic Fountain there is a sense of momentarily glimpsing a sense of truth and enlightenment, and constantly searching to regain it, but it remains as elusive as trying to regain innocence.
That sensibility is indeed revered in the music and the story, so it's unsurprising that the stage direction and musical production seek to adhere as closely as it can to the original intentions of the work and let it express it own truths. There's no attempt to make what is abstract and symbolic real or realistic, but rather through the music seeking to express or touch on the possibility of deeper enlightenment, a pure love, of the value of striving for an unattainable ideal. On a simple level there are only a small number of roles and no elaborate need for reinterpretation. The music is the key to the work and all the work is done there in the Wexford production under the baton of Francesco Cilluffo. There is little that is conventional in the orchestration, yet - as if indeed the composer has found a truer form of expression - little that is complicated either. The music buoys you along, sweeping, fluttering, imitating or evoking the sounds of earth, of nature, of an inner spiritual character or of a yearning to reach it.
Simon Higlett's set designs likewise kept it simple in line with director Christopher Luscombe's sober direction, not trying to overstate or overawe while the opera itself and its music remained understated. The production is at its most elaborate on the early scene on the ship, but once in Florida everything is stripped back to bold imagery of fronds, lights, stars and moonlight, with only the scene of Solano's meeting with the seer Talum Hadjo and a sequence native girls dancing presenting more elaborate scenes, neither of them entirely escaping an air of stereotypical imagery. The magical fountain of youth, when discovered, is also a little disappointing, looking like a tilted paddling pool with strands of glittering tinsel above it. On the other hand, it served the purpose of it being something symbolic, not representative of a physical place but an ideal where Solano and Watawa reach a mutual understanding, one however that cannot be achieved on any earthly plane. That ship (or plane) has long since sailed.
Composed between 1893-95, like many of Frederick Delius's works until championed by Thomas Beecham, The Magic Fountain was not fully staged until almost one hundred years later. As an opera, while it appears to aspire to the heights of Tristan und Isolde, it nonetheless achieves its own kind of spiritual awakening or integrity by finding a balance between the earthly paradise and a spiritual one in its music and voices. The voices have a freedom to give expression of what they are looking for, without being tied to any high-flown ideals or compositional technicalities, finding their voice rather in the sense the harmony in and with the music. The two lead roles were taken well by Dominick Chenes and Axelle Saint Cirel with bass Kamohelo Tsotetsi as Wataka's father Wapanacki, grounding the proceedings with a more earthy sensibility and gravity.
There is no question that The Magic Fountain is a very distinctive work and one from a composer largely and unjustly neglected, an absolute treat for those seeking out rare operas worthy of greater recognition. Wexford Festival Opera certainly handled this one with the respect it deserved, but there was a feeling that it was maybe too sombre and respectful in its 16th century setting and lacked a meaningful context for the conflicts of cultural and ideological difference that Solano seeks to resolve. Whether it's the work itself that doesn't quite meet the elevated expectations it sets out for itself - as beautiful and enchanting as it is - or whether the production could have benefitted from a little more adventurous interpretation is open to question, but it was a wonderful opera to experience on the National Opera House stage nonetheless.
External links: Wexford Festival Opera, Wexford Festival Opera Streaming on RTE Lyric FM
