Over 75 events taking place across Wexford Festival Opera

In 1951, a local Wexford man and opera enthusiast, Dr Tom Walsh, gathered his friends and a team of local volunteers to set up the first edition of the Wexford Festival Opera.

Since those early days, the festival has grown and grown and is now an annual landmark event in the international opera calendar, with this year's events marking the festival's 75th anniversary.

For Artistic Director of the festival Rosetta Cucchi, the enduring appeal of the festival can be explained as "the magic of Wexford".

She said that "despite many other festivals, it is the connection that Wexford festival has with this town, and with these people that makes it magical."

"You arrive here, artists arrive here, and feel immediately the welcoming of this of this town," Ms Cucchi added.

Wexford Festival Opera aims to present high-quality productions of rarely performed opera repertoire and to discover and promote emerging national and international artistic talent.

The festival programme for this year's landmark anniversary offers audiences 75 events over 17 days.

The jam-packed programme, which starts this evening, has "one eye on the past, one eye on the future", Ms Cucchi said.

There are three principal operas at the core of the programme including Iris by Mascagni, Le Quivo Costravagante by Rossini, and The Gambler by Prokofiev.

Alongside those main shows are many other side events, including pocket opera, community opera, factory opera concerts, and for this landmark year, Croí na Féile.

This special concert on Saturday night features international singers who performed first at Wexford when they were young, and have gone onto establish international careers.

They are returning to perform for one night.

Specially commissioned for the 75th anniversary, Colm Tóibín's new work, called 'First festival' which is another of the highly anticipated events taking place.

Set in the local motor tax office in Wexford in 1951, the opera celebrates the excitement first felt across the town for that first opera event.

The unique connection between the local town and the festival is celebrated by the participation of local residents in the community chorus.

Composer-in-residence Ailís Ní Ríain has created an original work called 'Still, Life' .

It is world premiere for this opera which includes the emerging artists from The Factory, and 18 local community cast members from the town.

"We've been working together on this idea for almost two years," she said.

The story explores the town's reaction to a man who decides to sit on top of a four days without explanation.

The community cast here "are brilliant, very up for it, very enthusiastic", Ms Ní Ríain said.

"They literally are cast as the town and community of the piece, so they have a really substantial role," she added.

The composer is deaf and hard of hearing, describing her hearing as "compromised in multiple ways".

She said "while I need some assistance in what I do, I'm crystal clear in what my intent is".

"Any of us coming to to the arts with any difference, disability or different ability, are mostly focused on what we want to create and how we can go about creating it, and who we can bring in to assist us and to you know drive momentum and make sure we have the support we need to make work, and that's certainly been the case here," she said.

She is proud of the production and the "fantastic cast and crew here in Wexford".

One of the local residents featured in 'Still, life' is Brian Mullen.

He is a waiter working locally, and he has been cast as the narrator in the production.

He said that "I never expected to be part of the opera, it's 75 years of the festival , and I'm 40 years old, and I've never been part of it before."

He said that he is "really enjoying being part of the festival," describing himself as "very lucky and very happy".

The festival runs from 15 to 31 October.