Claregalway Castle hosts music festival

This year’s Summer Music in Galway Festival is in full flight, with several events being held over the weekend, including an opera for children and one for adults in the grounds of Claregalway Castle.

The Festival opened last Monday in Claregalway Castle with a day-long 20th anniversary gathering of musicians and families from every continent. Many of these have attended SMG at least once over the past 20 years. 

This year’s SMG Youth Opera Theatre’s production of The Green Children by Nicola LeFanu, will be performed at Claregalway Castle this Friday at 8.00pm. 

This is one of the most powerful operas ever composed for children and adults, with beautiful music and a moving and dramatic storyline.  Based on a 12th century story by the chronicler Ralph of Coggenhall, the opera opens when villagers find two green children lost in the woods. The villagers are initially fearful of and antagonistic towards the strange looking children, who today would be described as refugees from an ‘ethnically visible minority’.  This initial prejudice dissipates when the Green Boy dies and the Green Girl tells an extraordinary story about their green world and how she and her brother found their way to middle earth. The opera concludes with a total acceptance of the Green Girl by the villagers and her decision to marry Guy, a local young man.

The SMG 2013 opera team includes director Airlie Scott from London, music director Bruce Dunn from Canada, and visiting artist, soprano Elinor Moran, from London.

SMG performances will conclude with a ‘20th Anniversary Gathering Farewell’, this Saturday in Claregalway Castle.  This will be an all-day family event with music for and by children in the afternoon, and an evening orchestral concert which will include Vivaldi’s popular Four Seasons, with violin soloist Keith Pascoe from Cork, and a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Lunchtime concerts, free to the public, will be held daily from 1.00pm to 1.30pm until this Friday, August 9. Tickets for all events: Web: www.glór.ie;  Glór Box Office, 065 684 3103, or at the door, prior to each event