Kilkenny Arts Festival, 9-19 August 2018
One of Europe’s leading arts festivals announces exciting plans for 2018, filling the atmospheric spaces and narrow streets of medieval Kilkenny with art and adventure in late summer for the 45th year - full programme will be announced in June.
Blending old and new, classic and challenging, the much-loved and the little-known, this year’s Kilkenny Arts Festival presents theatre, music, dance, spoken word, art, design and much more, including a fresh Irish take on Shakespeare’s best-loved comedy, an innovative full staging of baroque opera, an enchanting series of Brahms chamber works and extraordinary late Beethoven, all making splendid use of Kilkenny’s historic spaces.
First Highlights announced Thursday 26th April and on sale at 1pm include:
Shakespeare in the Castle Yard: always a Festival ‘must see’ and a unique theatrical experience. This year, Rough Magic and the Festival premier a new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Lynne Parker, offering outrageous proof that Shakespeare is for life, not just for the Leaving Cert.
Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses: the first staging in Ireland of a baroque masterpiece. Opera Collective Ireland joins forces with the Festival to present Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses, directed by Tony Award-winning director Patrick Mason, featuring the world-renowned early music ensemble Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin conducted by Christian Curnyn, and showcasing many of Ireland’s rising operatic stars, including Raphaela Mangan as Penelope and Gyula Nagy as Ulysses.
Brahms in the Afternoon: a chance to experience some of the great Romantic composer’s most beautiful chamber works at lunchtime in the magical setting of St John’s Priory.
Later Beethoven: an evening series featuring the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Festival’s resident orchestra, which juxtaposes the great composer’s still astonishing works from his later years with thrilling 21st century compositions.
New York Time: Acclaimed actor Stephen Rea performing Derek Mahon’s epic poetic sequence in a new musical setting.
Announcing this year’s headline events, Festival Director Eugene Downes said “We’re very excited about this programme, and invite everyone to join us in Kilkenny for a fabulous two weeks of art and creativity. Whatever your previous experience of the arts, there’s a welcome for you in Kilkenny this year. There’s something for everyone, young and old, day and evening, indoors and out, with opportunities to experience heart-stopping artworks and world-renowned artists in what I believe are some of the most magical performance spaces in Ireland.”
About the Kilkenny Arts Festival
Founded in 1974, Kilkenny - with its narrow medieval streets and thrilling, acoustically ideal buildings - is one of Ireland’s oldest and most respected international arts events. Intimate and culturally vibrant, it’s the perfect setting for a festival that dares to embrace tradition, balancing a passion for the classical and the canonical with fresh approaches, imaginative collaborations and iconic performers.
Tickets on sale Thursday 26th April at 1pm | Full details at kilkennyarts.ie
Kilkenny Arts Festival 2018
First Anouncements – Full Programme Details
THEATRE
ROUGH MAGIC & KILKENNY ARTS FESTIVAL
NEW PRODUCTION PREMIERE
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
By William Shakespeare
Shakespeare in the Castle Yard is always a festival ‘must see’ and a unique theatrical experience for young and old. This year, Rough Magic’s new and uniquely Irish take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream - directed by Lynne Parker and created specially for Castle Yard - will offer magical, colourful, joyous proof that Shakespeare is for life, not just for the Leaving Cert.
Spirits, lovers, tyrants, fools – which is which? Under Lynne Parker’s direction, Rough Magic’s dynamic new creative ensemble of actors and designers present Shakespeare’s most enchanting comedy.
From within the walls of the Castle Yard springs a parallel reality as the natural forces of magnetism and electricity run wild; a topsy-turvy universe ignited by incandescent language, where the laws of physics warp, the mind plays tricks, and civilization crumbles beneath a crazy bunch of characters who don’t know which way to turn. We mortals may have meddled with nature too long…
9th -12 th, 14th -18 th August, 8pm (Preview 9th)
Killenny Castle Yard
Creative Team
Lynne Parker director
Sarah Jane Shiels set & lighting design
Katie Davenport costume design
Denis Clohessy sound design
OPERA
OPERA COLLECTIVE IRELAND & KILKENNY ARTS FESTIVAL
IRISH PREMIERE PRODUCTION
THE RETURN OF ULYSSES
by Claudio Monteverdi
with Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin
In a rare theatrical staging of a baroque masterpiece, Opera Collective Ireland will present the first ever Irish production of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses, directed by Tony award-winning director Patrick Mason and featuring the world-renowned early music ensemble Akademie für Alte Musik from Berlin.
Ten years after the fall of Troy, the hero Ulysses has still not found his way home, as the gods quarrel over his fate. In Ithaca, his wife Penelope has waited faithfully, hoping against hope that he may still be alive. Meanwhile the suitors are circling…
The ground-breaking company Opera Collective Ireland joins forces with Kilkenny Arts Festival to showcase Ireland’s finest operatic talent of the younger generation in a new production by Tony Award-winning director Patrick Mason. Christian Curnyn returns to the Festival following superb performances of Idomeneo and Giulio Cesare to conduct one of the world’s most acclaimed early music ensembles, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. The heart-stopping tale of true love against adversity is performed in a vivid new English translation by Christopher Cowell.
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to experience a glorious operatic marriage of Homer’s epic and renaissance Venice.
9th & 10th August 7pm / 12th August, 3pm
Watergate Theatre
Cast
Human Frailty: Eoin Conway
Time: Brendan Collins
Fortune: Rachel Goode
Love: Emma Morwood
Jove: Andrew Boushell
Neptune: Alan Ewing
Minerva: Emma Morwood
Juno: Rachel Goode
Ulysses: Gyula Nagy
Penelope: Raphaela Mangan
Telemachus: Andrew Gavin
Antinous: Brendan Collins
Peisander: Eoin Conway
Amphinomus: Andrew Boushell
Eurymachus: Peter Harris
Melantho: Margaret Bridge
Eumaeus: Rory Musgrave
Irus: Ross Scanlon
Euryclea: Bríd Ní Ghruagáin
Creative Team
Christian Curnyn conductor
Patrick Mason director
Paul Keogan set & lighting designer
Catherine Fay costume designer
LITERATURE/SPOKEN WORD
PREMIERE
STEPHEN REA performs
NEW YORK TIME
by Derek Mahon
with a new score by Neil Martin
Brian Connor piano
After his triumphant performances of Seamus Heaney’s Aeneid Book VI and Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis at the 2016 and 2017 Festivals, Stephen Rea returns to the Watergate for a brand new project with one of Ireland’s – and the world’s - greatest living poets. Derek Mahon’s New York Time (originally published as The Hudson Letter) is an intensely personal poetic sequence drawing on his years living in Manhattan. Featuring a new live score composed by Neil Martin and performed by Brian Connor, New York Time is set to offer a unique experience, elegiac, witty and profound.
Presented in association with the Gallery Press
17th August, 6pm
18th August, 4pm
Watergate Theatre
MUSIC
Building on Kilkenny’s repuation for world-class, expertly curated classical sequences, these first music highlights look to bring new life - and new listeners - to the canon of European music: Brahms in the Afternoon unfolds some of the great Romantic composer’s most enchanting chamber works in the magical setting of St. John’s Priory; in Later Beethoven, the Irish Chamber Orchestra and guests contrast the great composer’s still astonishing works from his later years with thrilling 21st century sounds; elsewhere, the celebrated early music ensemble Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin explores the rise of instrumental music in Italy, famed baritone Benjamin Appl sings Schubert and Russian-American star Johnny Gandelsman returns to the Festival to perform Bach’s complete works for solo violin.
BRAHMS IN THE AFTERNOON
PIANO WORKS
Finghin Collins (piano)
10th August, 5pm
St John’s Priory
Programme
Rhapsodies Op 79
Intermezzi Op 118 & 119
PIANO TRIOS & QUARTETS
Finghin Collins (piano), Katherine Hunka (violin),
Cian Ó Dúill (viola), Christian Elliot (cello)
11th & 12th August, 1pm
St John’s Priory
Programme I
Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op. 8
Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60
Programme II
Piano Trio No. 3 in C minor, Op. 101
Piano Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 26
CELLO SONATAS
Christian Elliot (cello), Finghin Collins (piano)
13th August, 1pm
St John’s Priory
Programme
Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor, Op. 28
Cello Sonata No. 2 in F Major, Op. 99
PIANO DUOS
Pavel Kolesnikov & Samson Tsoy (piano)
14th August, 1pm
St John’s Priory
Programme
Variations on a Theme of Handel Op. 24
Valses Op. 39
Variations on a Theme of Schumann Op. 23
ORGAN PRELUDES
Malcolm Proud
15th August, 1pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Programme
Eleven Chorale Preludes Op. 122
VIOLA SONATAS
Timothy Ridout (viola), Pavel Kolesnikov (piano)
16th August, 1pm
Programme
Viola Sonatas Nos 1 & 2, Op. 120
Three Intermezzi for piano, Op. 117
STRING QUARTETS & QUINTETS
Quatuor Voce (France)
& guests Hélène Desaint (viola)
and Florent Héau (clarinet)
17th -19th August, 1pm
Programme I (17 August)
String Quartet No. 3 in B flat Major, Op. 67
Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115
Programme II (18 August)
String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 51 No. 1
String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111
Programme III (19 August)
String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 51 No. 2
String Quintet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 88
LATER BEETHOVEN
Featuring the IRISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Resident orchestra of Kilkenny Arts Festival
Programme I
Katherine Hunka & Christian Elliot (directors)
Alex Petcu-Colan (percussion)
10th August, 8pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Sam Perkin: 365 Variations on a Gesture
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 13 in B flat Major, Op. 130
Programme II
Katherine Hunka & Christian Elliot (directors)
14th August, 8pm
Watergate Theatre
Sam Perkin: Nimbus
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 131
Programme III
Jörg Widmann (conductor) (Germany)
Carolin Widmann (violin) (Germany)
18th August, 7.30pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Widmann: Con Brio
Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92
OTHER CLASSICAL CONCERTS
AKADEMIE FÜR ALTE MUSIK BERLIN (Germany)
11th August, 7.30pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Georg Kallweit (director/leader)
Programme
Monteverdi’s Italy: The Rise of Instrumental Music
Works by Bertali, Uccellini, Caccini, Falconieri, Valentini, Mealli, Marini,
Legrenzi, Ferrari, Monteverdi & Biber
BACH: THE VIOLIN SONATAS & PARTITAS
Johnny Gandelsman (Russia/US)
13th August, 7.30pm
St Canice’s RC Church
Programme
Bach: Sonatas & Partitas for Violin BWV 1001-06
BENJAMIN APPL & PAVEL KOLESNIKOV
17th August, 8pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Programme
Songs by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms & Grieg
CHAMBER CHOIR IRELAND
Paul Hillier (conductor)
18th August, 10pm
St Canice’s RC Church
Programme
Palestrina: Kyrie & Gloria from Missa Brevis
Küpfer: Motet for 8 voices, Erforsche mich
Isaac: Innsbruck ich muss dich lassen
Brahms: Two Motets Op. 29
Isaac/J.S. Bach: Nun ruhen alle Wälder
J.S. Bach: Motet BWV 227, Jesu meine Freude