Town and port in south-east Ireland. It attained international musical fame in October 1951, when a festival was founded by T.J. Walsh, a local doctor with a passion for opera. Walsh remained artistic director until 1966; after the first year when Balfe's Rose of Castille was given at the Theatre Royal, the repertory (with the annual number of operas growing from one to three) consisted almost entirely of 19th-century Italian works: Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and early Verdi. French operas were sometimes included, but usually sung in Italian. An exception was Massenet's Don Quichotte, conducted by Albert Rosen, who took part in over 20 festivals between 1965 and 1994. Walsh had a special aptitude for discovering young singers: among those who appeared at Wexford early in their careers were Mirella Freni, Graziella Sciutti, Janet Baker, Fiorenza Cossotto, Alain Vanzo and Giacomo Aragall.
Brian Dickie, artistic director from 1967 to 1973, extended the repertory back to Haydn and Mozart, and forward to Janáček and Britten. He also billed French operas by Delibes, Gounod and Bizet, mostly conducted by David Lloyd Jones, and two Russian works: Glinka's A Life for the Tsar, in which the Finnish bass Matti Salminen made his West European début as Ivan Susanin, and Prokofiev's The Gambler. Thomson Smillie (1974–8) pushed the repertory yet further back to Cavalli, while consolidating the French element with Lalo and more Massenet. Adrian Slack (1979–81) found a new seam to mine in verismo composers such as Montemezzi and Wolf-Ferrari.
During Elaine Padmore's directorship (1982–94) Wexford flourished as never before. The theatre auditorium and backstage area were enlarged and the festival extended to 18 days, while the repertory also expanded: Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini still found a place, as did French opera, from Boieldieu and Hérold to Thomas (Mignon) and more little-known Massenet. Padmore disinterred works by Alfano, Catalini, Giordano and Mascagni and presented German operas from Marschner and Humperdinck to Goetz and Weill. Her final festival consisted of Wagner's Das Liebesverbot, Leoncavallo's La bohème and Rubinstein's The Demon, an archetypal Wexford programme. She introduced new singers (Cynthia Clarey, Bruce Ford, Raúl Giménez, Sergey Leiferkus), conductors (Yan Pascal Tortelier) and directors (Declan Donnellan, Francesca Zambello, Lucy Bailey). Luigi Ferrari succeeded Padmore as the festival's director in 1995.
T.J. Walsh, B. Dickie and E. Forbes: ‘The Wexford Festival’, Opera (1973), festival issue, 10–21
I. Fox, ed.: 100 Nights at the Opera: an Anthology to Celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Wexford Festival Opera (Dublin, 1991)
ELIZABETH FORBES