Wexford Festival Opera has long enjoyed support from musicians and benefactors in America. And this year’s festival opened with the European premiere of John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles, commissioned by the Met in 1991 and now seen in a co-production with the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

Corigliano’s conceit is that the dead Beaumarchais, in love with the dead Marie Antoinette, tries to save her from execution within the plot of a new play. But the jaded revolutionaries of his Figaro mess things up; Beaumarchais has to intervene in his own play; and the sacrifice of his writerly powers enables Marie Antoinette to accept her destiny at last.

The crisscrossing of timescales enables Corigliano, characteristically, to use pastiche, be eclectic and create ravishing tonal/atonal miasmas all his own. Michael Christie, conducting, handled this with sensitivity. And James Robinson, directing, created a seductive visual equivalent in the use of coloured period costumes for Figaro’s world, and a virtuoso, grisaille-like wardrobe of greys and whites for the “undead”.

With a whirling diorama of video projection, large chorus and dancers, there was never a dull moment; but never a meaningful or truly dramatic one either. George von Bergen sang the one-dimensional part of Beaumarchais with élan, and Maria Kanyova gave her slightly erratic all to the Dallas-housewife figure of Marie Antoinette. Laura Vlasak Nolen belly-danced her way through the Turkish scene, complete with model camel.

Roberto Recchia, directing a trivial double bill of Chabrier’s Une Éducation manquée and Rossini’s La cambiale di matrimonio, made strenous efforts to find a “brave new world” link between the experiences of the various pairs of lovers: the first play-acting in Mozartian costume, the second barcoded on their foreheads in a futuristic 2049, and rewarded with the wedding finery of the Chabrier at the end. Christopher Franklin conducted a cast of generally undistinguished singers.

At last, a substantial melodramma in Donizetti’s Maria Padilla — poorly staged by Marco Gandini, and with Wexford’s artistic director, David Agler, conducting a cast led valiantly by Barbara Quintiliani in the title role. Marco Caria sang at full baritone throttle throughout as her lover-king, Don Pedro, and the tenor Adriano Graziani gave a sympathetic portrayal of the heroine’s deranged father.

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