What fun!

There’ll be more from Killarney and environs in time, but for now, it’s time to share a couple of hours in Wexford. We’re here for the 75th Opera Festival and will meet our German friends later. For now, though, we had a couple of hours in which to kick start the fun.

We’ve been here before, a couple of years ago, when this pub next door to our hotel kicked off our stay in style with music, Guinness and yes, plenty of craic!

This morning, just the two of us for now, we decided to head down into town in plenty of time for the noon-time “pop up opera”, which today was taking place in a bank. We stopped to peer into the window of the art shop along the way, for me to take a snap of their window display.

As we did, we spotted our German friends Volker and Sabine right there in one of the photos of the festival!

We sat outside the bank for a while, noticing the chap taking a piano inside before thinking that maybe we’d step in there now, even though there was still half an hour to go. Who knows how full it would get? Once inside, we spotted a couple of empty chairs so moved to sit down. As we did, a lady on the same row said “that one’s saved for my friend” - no matter, we sat on the row behind her as she apologised profusely and we giggled and said we didn’t want to cross the locals!!

We’ve said before how much we love it here. How delightful the Irish people are and how, within minutes, one can find new best friends. That’s exactly how it was here, for her friend arrived, we chatted (the usual, where are you from and how long are you staying - realising that in these few moments we had become part of the gang 😄

By the time the singers were ready to begin, there was barely room for another person in the whole building. It had been standing room only for a long time and now, one of the bank employees stood by the door and explained “no room”.

The young mezzo soprano, Yasmine O’Reilly,, was terrific - we’d forgotten how special it is to be in close quarters with such accomplished singers and of course, the delight of the unusual setting merely added to the fun.

She was joined by a young tenor, Cuan Durkin; a fine fellow with a twinkle in his eye and a kiss curl on his forehead. He gave a dashing performance before sitting with his guitar to sing a bit of Elivs… "Can’t help falling in love with you”

Fabulous.

They sang a duet and brought the house down - or rather, the bank!!

What a great way to open our Festival experience.

We lost no time in hot footing it to the theatre, because we had tickets for a lunchtime recital there. As we stood in the foyer, waiting for the doors to open, who should come and say hello but our friend from the pop up!

“Are you stalking us?” we asked.

Well no, she’d actually just come for lunch in the cafe here, though when we said we had two extra tickets for the recital if she’d like them, she gave it some thought. Within minutes, she’d called her sister who lives nearby who joined us as well…what a merry band we were!

Gotta love Ireland!!

We had terrific seats in the theatre for the recital by Igor Onischenko, a Ukranian tenor, accompanied by Liuba Orfenova.

Absolutely magical from start to finish. He sang a mixed programme of well known arias and lesser known but beautiful songs, by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, rounding off his performance with a couple of show stoppers. His encore was Nessun Dorma, but he went on to stand and sing a Ukranian folk song from his childhood, unaccompanied, which was a most moving conclusion to the recital.

In little more than a couple of hours we’d had such a fabulous time. We’d giggled with new friends, we’d heard the most magical music and we looked forward to more of the same over the next few days.

“‘Bye now. See you at the next pop up!” we said.

We were ready for a spot of lunch and a pint of Guinness 😉