Wexford Festival Opera 2026: Iris

Leyla Gu and dancers in Iris. Image, Padraig Grant

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When it comes to opera, who’d want to be a woman? It so rarely ends well, especially for the virtuous. Pietro Mascagni’s 1898 opera Iris, with libretto by Luigi Illica, another case in point. The childlike Iris a Japanese woman destroyed by her beauty. Not by masculine vanity, greed, or lust, nor by a society which rendered women as property to be possessed. No, Iris is damned by her girlish seductiveness that sees men helpless to control themselves around her. Her sin to have been tempted to pleasure at a puppet show into momentarily abandoning her blind father. Her punishment, unfitting of the crime, a slow, agonising death. Already you see the problem for today’s audiences conscious of sex-trafficking and the Cornell University sex case. Iris’s fairytale parable not just dated in both theme and telling, but dangerously so. Daddy’s little helper with her good girl doll’s house promoting misogynistic ideals even if she emerges as vindicated heroine. Her repentant suitor and abandoned father, left untreated, facilitating another incel fantasy of male superiority. Iris merely a vehicle to facilitate their moral learning.

Leyla Gu and Jihoon Kim in Iris. Image, Padraig Grant

Which is why you simply have to love Wexford Festival Opera, celebrating its 75th anniversary. Each festival a cornucopia of operatic delights. Reclaiming and interrogating neglected operas just the tip of its impressive iceberg. Director Rosetta Cucchi (also the Festival’s Artistic Director) repositioning Iris as a social question rather than a spiritual statement, whilst reminding audiences of Mascagni’s operatic explorations beyond strict verismo. Iris a rich ragù of Italian operatic gorgeousness with a sprinkling of secret seasonings to liven the flavours. Evidence of Wexford Festival Opera’s fearless striving for the very best, of being forever ready to take risks. Even when not all pay off to everyone’s satisfaction.

Jolyon Loy, Joseph Calleja, dancers in Iris. Image, Padraig Grant

Despite several operas referencing Asia, Iris suffers a distinct smack of Orientalism. The setting might be Japan, but its themes are unquestionably classicist and Christian, built around Western notions of purity and corruption. Pantheistic innocence and prophetic dreams see soprano Leyla Gu’s sun-kissed, nature girl, Iris, metamorphosed into a radiant flower after her defilement; both theme and idea lifted straight out of Ovid. Overlaid with the death and resurrection show of an innocent Eve stolen from her Eden and her stern blind father, bass Jihoon Kim's vindictive Il Cieco. Tempted by two devils in disguise, baritone Jolyon Loy’s snakelike pimp Kyoto, and tenor Joseph Calleja’s Osaka, a silver-tongued wolf in sheep’s clothing, Iris is whisked away from paradise to a brothel in Tokyo. Kidnapped, abused, and wrongly accused, Iris ultimately descends to the sewers of hell to complete her purgatorial cleansing before her saintly ascension to heaven.

Joseph Calleja, Leyla Gu in Iris. Image, Padraig Grant

If Mascagni is often regarded as a one-opera wonder, Cucchi knows Cavalleria rusticana is not the full story. Iris’s soaring, sweeping score awash with moments of lush, lavish gorgeousness that simply drip with romance. Along with fresh musical ideas displaying a penchant for Japanese instrumentation, creating internal tensions not always resolved. The opening orchestral strains through to the end of the chorally sublime Hymn to the Sun foreshadowing, musically and thematically, the deeply emotive and deeply dramatic journey that follows, reflected in Cucchi's unstable spectacle. Tiziano Santi’s busy set, Claudia Pernigotti’s vibrant costumes and Thomas Achitz’s fashion-shoot video design achieving varying degrees of success. Suggesting Cucchi as a gifted painter engaged in the making of a movie, like Dalí’s famous insert for Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), but not quite as effective with movement and flow. Traces of German Expressionism, Universal Horror, Hieronymus Bosch, Bauhaus and Kabuki inform images of statues, masks, and dreamlike reveries like ideas in search of a vision, or trees in search of a forest. The opening sequence’s Zen dreamscape fliping into a cold silhouetted chorus foreshadowing the lack of visual cohesion that follows. Not so much anything goes but everything goes. Against which Daniele Naldi’s ambitious lighting proves astonishingly gorgeous.

Iris. Image, Padraig Grant

Throughout, Cucchi crafts powerful images: the sewers, more dump or marionettes’ graveyard, see bodies scuttle like rats; a bevy of vampiric beauties cowering like goth dolls suggesting Dracula’s geisha wives; the sublime, petal-strewn finale an image of palpable gorgeousness. In contrast, movement frequently appears sluggish or unfocused. An impressive aerial routine feels like an insert that slows the action. A seamlessly introduced ballet sequence looks flaccid and unexciting. Most of Act Two finds Osaka walking around aimlessly in Iris’s gilded cage as if desperately looking for something to do. Images and action, like music and singing, too often competing rather than complementing. Yet singing is simple, sensuous, and sublime. Both Loy and Calleja magnificent; the tenor’s luxuriating tone irresistible. For some, conversations between baritone and soprano might feel like lightness shackled and oppressed, which would serve the narrative. Yet it’s more a case of opposites attracting. Gu’s softer, uplifting soprano offset by the crunching crack of a biscuit-base baritone creating a delightful combination of textures and flavours. With Gu proving a soprano par excellence. Flawless in power, range, timbre and tone, Gu delivers a perfectly judged performance. One as seductively spellbinding as it is effortlessly breathtaking.

Iris. Image, Padraig Grant

In the end, does Iris jump or is she pushed? Cucchi’s reframing might suggest the latter, but the end still leaves an unsatisfactory taste in the mouth. Visually, Iris can seem like parading through a gallery to an opera soundtrack, yet certain images stop you dead in your tracks. Iris reclaiming Mascagni’s ambitious music, conveyed with conviction by the Orchestra of Wexford Festival Opera under the baton of Francesco Cilluffo. The whole asking deeper, thematic questions about opera’s representation of women. Making Iris an opera for today and a heroine who might speak to the 21st century. All in all, a terrific evening of Italian opera to kick off Wexford Festival Opera’s 75th Festival celebrations.

Iris, an opera in three acts by Pietro Mascagni, libretto by Luigi Illica, sung in Italian with English surtitles, runs at National Opera House, Wexford (O’Reilly Theatre) on October 15, 20, 23, 28 and 31 as part of Wexford Festival Opera 2026.

For more information visit Wexford Festival Opera 2026