Sweet song and discord were features of the glittering social and musical occasion that was the opening of the Wexford Festival last night.
Carl Maria von Weber's, Die drei Pintos, left unfinished on the composer's death in 1826 and completed by Gustav Mahler in 1888, offered all the charms of German romantic opera inside the Theatre Royal. Outside on the street, members of the Musicians Union of Ireland (MUI), with support from colleagues in Irish Actors' Equity, staged a protest at the use for the third year in a row of musicians from Belarus, who replaced the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's festival role in 2001.
MUI secretary, Mr John Swift, claimed the festival's use of the Belarussian musicians is depriving Irish-based musicians of substantial performing opportunities. The National Philharmonic Orchestra of Belarus has 63 players plus management in Wexford for 4½ weeks.
The MUI last night called on the festival, the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment, and the Arts Council to ensure that in future, the orchestra and chorus for the Wexford Festival Opera "are from Ireland or another European Union country".
The stalemate between RTÉ and the Wexford Festival has lasted three years.
Ireland is unusual in European terms in that the country's radio orchestras double up as national and opera orchestras.
Arts Council funding of opera is low by international standards, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the overall budget for the arts. The low Arts Council opera spending has forced both the Wexford Festival and Opera Ireland into ongoing dependency on an RTÉ subsidy.
The largely unspoken solution to the Wexford problem would be for the Arts Council to provide the festival with the resources to hire Irish musicians at Irish rates.
Sources close to the festival confirmed that a suitable orchestra of Irish players hired in this way would be a fully acceptable solution to the current dilemma.
This year's festival programme includes operatic rarities in Spanish (Granados's Mariá del Carmen) and Czech (Weinberger's Schwanda the Bagpiper). It runs until Sunday, November 2nd.
