It’s good to be able to confirm that the Glasthule Opera season I mentioned in the last post is going ahead as planned on June 23-27, and I gather rehearsals have begun.  Taking place in the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, the season alternates between three performances of La Bohème [Puccini] on June 23, 25 & 27 and a double-bill of Riders to the Sea [Vaughan Williams] and The Wandering Scholar [Holst] on June 24 & 26.  Matching Riders to the Sea (c. 40 minutes) with something to fill out an average-length evening programme seems to be part of the challenge of producing this piece nowadays.  Last year’s memorable ENO production picked up on the sea imagery and used Jan Sibelius’ solo cantata Luonnatar as an atmospheric prelude of sorts, while here the connection is more literary and localised, with both Riders and The Wandering Scholar being adaptations of texts by Irish writers (J.M Synge and Helen Waddell respectively).  Indeed, it’s strange there aren’t more Synge-related performances happening this year, since it’s the centenary of his death – maybe producers think we’re Synged out after the DruidSynge cycle of 2004-06, and the Abbey’s new version of Playboy, or else it’s just the recession?  Whatever – Riders to the Sea as an opera combines the talents of two greatly underrated artists in both Synge and Vaughan Williams, so it’s always good to have the piece revived profesionally, rather than its usual fate as fodder for student productions.  I’m also looking forward to the Holst, simply because I don’t know it (!), and it will be nice to see an intimate staging of Bohème, performed by some of the best of Irelend’s emerging singers.