Expansion
In a bold move, the festival's home of so many years, the Theatre Royal, was demolished and replaced by the Wexford Opera House on the same site. The first opera in the new building opened on 16 October 2008. Wexford Opera House provides the festival with a modern venue with a 35% increase in capacity by creating the 771-seat O'Reilly Theatre and a second, highly flexible Jerome Hynes Theatre, seating up to 176. The architect was Keith Williams Architects with the Office of Public Works; the acoustics and structure were designed by Arup.
In 2006, because of the closure of the Theatre Royal, a reduced festival took place in the Dún Mhuire Hall on Wexford's South Main Street. Only two operas were staged over a period of two weeks, instead of the usual three operas over three weeks. In 2007, the festival took place in the summer in a temporary theatre in the grounds of Johnstown Castle, a stately home roughly 5 miles from the town centre.
The Wexford Opera House was officially opened on 5 September 2008 in a ceremony with an Taoiseach Brian Cowen, followed by a live broadcast of RTE's The Late Late Show from the O'Reilly Theatre.
Read more about this topic: Wexford Festival Opera
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—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)
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—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)