Cosí fan tutte programme book 2023

A TIME
FOR OPERA
Photographer: Frank Doring
Historian Roy Foster’s book, Vivid Faces, influenced
director Polly Graham to an Irish take on individual
growth and the empowerment of women in Così fan
tutte. Michael Dervan talks to him about his love of
opera and the artform’s place in Irish society.
When I ask Roy Foster about how opera came to him, his reply is
shocking. “Probably real opera came to me when I went to live in London
in the Seventies,” he says. “I remember during the three-day week going
to the Royal Opera House when it was very cheap, and half the lights
were out, and Hildegard Behrens was singing Salome. If the Western
world is coming to an end, this is the way to go.”
But it turns out Salome was far from his first opera. He grew up in
Waterford when the city’s Festival of Light Opera was very vibrant. “We
used to be dragged along to that. My mother took a very grand attitude
towards it and thought it was idiotic stuff. She never brought us to
Wexford, interestingly, but she said this was better than nothing. So I
suppose that was my initial start.”
He remembers “bad productions of Tosca” and other things from his time
in Dublin. London was a turning point and, recently, he says, “it’s not just
London. It’s Garsington, it’s Longborough, it’s Glyndebourne if somebody
else takes me. And then English Touring Opera which always starts in
the Hackney Empire, which is a wonderful place to hear opera. James
Conway has done terrific productions there.”
I ask about his taste in opera. “An American friend unkindly says I’m a
schmalz maven,” he tells me. “I love Strauss and verismo opera, Verdi,
of course. But one thing I really like about Irish National Opera is the
way they’re introducing brand new operas into the repertoire, along
with the classics. I think they’re doing that very adroitly and very well.
I am fairly omnivorous, I would think. I’m starting to like Britten much
more than I did. I used not to. Now I’m getting into it. What I’ve come to
like is a harshness of works like Turn of the Screw and Peter Grimes. I
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