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Now Irish National Opera continues its award-winning exploration of the Valdes operas with the work that started the 20th century revival of his works for the stage which is the Olympia Day and it is on an ingredient theater and very shortly in fact Tuesday the 30th of this month tickets are now available and I'm delighted that I'm joined on the line and by Zoom with Sarah Richmond who is a Meso Soprano has sung at the Royal Opera House the English National Opera and at Wexford Festival Opera amongst many other groups and places and so Sarah delighted that you could join me for a few words about this um hard to pronounce opera thanks for having me yeah li olimpiad it's Italian okay li olimpiad and so tell us tell us a little bit you know for someone who who's not O'Faye with opera tell tell us about it okay this particular opera is written in a time called the baroque period but we joke that it's baroque and roll rock and roll because there's quite a lot of dance rhythms in it right and it's being played by the Irish baroque orchestra conducted by Peter Whelan and they're known for really precise rhythms and they really bring out the dance elements to the music so essentially it's it's a group of seven singers telling a story with music written by Vivaldi and an orchestra so we're telling a story it's called the Olympian but there's not that much olympics in it actually it's more about the story of a king who's very old school set in his ways and it's about his transition to becoming open-minded and um yeah it's it's more about finding your happy ending yeah like like most stage productions it's about the characters and you get invested with the characters okay in a different way with opera but it is it's all about you know and I suppose believing in the characters and having empathy for what they're going through and understanding what's at play understanding can be tricky in opera for some that's very true very true and there's always going to be subtitles so there will be the English translation but hopefully what we're doing um on stage will kind of spell out the story um I think a lot of the cast are known for their acting abilities and um you know Matthew Forbes the the movement director said you know user triple threats which is a music theatre term for me and you know you're really good at acting as well as singing and moving on stage so it's not just about um it's not just about being able to understand Italian I think you will get the story just by watching what's happening on stage and uh reading the subtitles if you do want to know and specifically the words were being said yeah I've been to I think a couple of opera operas in my lifetime and you know if you make the effort you can follow it now there's no subtitles unfortunately but you know um once I knew the sort of the the outline concept I had a had an idea most of the way through as to what was happening so there's there's various ways that you can convey you know how you're feeling or what's happening or you know what's about to happen yeah when you see someone going through a heartbreak you kind of don't need to know exactly the language that they're saying you get you get the feeling of the heartbreak but yeah luckily we do have colloquial subtitles so you'll you'll get it and I am a big believer in doing opera in translation of the of the tongue of the audience though I've done quite a lot of opera in English because it's just my preference to understand immediately what's what's being said rather than having to go through the medium of sub or sur titles or whatever but I think whenever you do that you lose some of the beauty of the music so it's really nice that we've kept it in the Italian actually because you get to feel the flow of the music better yeah yeah um most people I suppose would associate Italian with opera or opera with the Italian language and almost expect that it's going to be in Italian but you're saying that maybe more and more is in English oh gosh yeah I mean I think the last time I was in letter Kenny was about a decade ago and we were doing Carmen with Northwest Opera and we did it in an English translation so um yeah there's there are these translations being done particularly by English National Opera in London um and then you've got your contemporary opera being written and I've done quite a lot of contemporary opera and most of it has been in English um the likes of Conor Mitchell, Andrew Sinnet um yeah current opera being written does tend to be in English that I've been doing yeah and um I'm detecting a hint of a northern accent there so where is it from uh home is Carrick Fergus, County Antrim, very good very good but you travel all over um it's not and not just around Ireland but um you know abroad indeed I live out of a suitcase yes um yeah there's quite a lot of traveling involved with this career um and it's definitely one of the things that isn't really spoken about much because it's such a privilege to have this career it really really is being able to go on stage connect with people tell stories saying live this beautiful music this beautiful drama uh but we we do have to travel a lot um so we're we're touring all around Ireland um and then we moved to London for a while we're in the Royal Opera House Limbry Theatre and then we're going to Switzerland which is awesome because I've never been I've had to buy an adapter plug lovely great part of the world and uh and then a lot later we're going to do it in Sicily as well that haven't been publicly announced yet but uh TBC Sicily okay how's it going to feel that uh doing it in Italy yeah I've done a couple of concerts in Italy before and it's terrifying singing in Italian for Italians um opera kind of originated in Florence and so the Italians really have this deep rooted connection to it and they very much like it done their way um so it's it really raises the stakes you know I can imagine but it's wonderful it's so good getting to go international yeah so uh where's letter Kenny on the list I mean this is a big production because you've got the Irish Baroque orchestra and the Olivier Award-winning conductor Peter Whelan on board uh so as you mentioned all those dates where where's where's letter Kenny uh where does letter Kenny fit so we open in Trilly this Saturday so we've got Trilly, Cork, Waterford, Limerick, letter Kenny, Navan, Dunlear, Minus uh so we've got all those all those so I think letter Kenny's kind of towards the beginning a few weeks in okay kind of thing okay well you'll be up to speed more most definitely by the time you you reach us and the the preparation all the all the rehearsal and all the practice has for the most parts uh done at this stage yes so we have done four weeks in Dublin putting it together so that means we have done the music together we've done the staging we know we know we've we've run the show already we are done so now this is called production week so this is where we join the theatre that we're going to do our first show in and we're actually on a stage um of a theatre so production week is where we start to see the lighting and the actual lighting that's going to be touring with us um uh by by Jake Wiltshire he's designed gorgeous lighting you should see the effects it's really nice um and we get to do it in full costume so we've been rehearsing in little bits of costume um Molly's done this great design but and actually for anyone watching on zoom my dungarees are a bit of a giveaway i've got sunflower dungarees on uh because we're gonna yeah we're gonna see them in a set yeah so this week we get the costume and the set and everything clicks together this week okay brilliant well listen um and the best look with it and uh and i have no doubt that it will come together as as all the the uh i and o productions do and we look forward to seeing you in letter kenny and in green and theater it is uh at the end of the month tuesday the 30th uh ticket details out in green and dot com uh sarah thank you very much thank you for having me all the best get with the best virgin media ireland's best broadband with full fiber and speeds of two gig is now available in dunny gall check your area on virgin media dot ie it's playtime virgin media sponsors of around the northwest tome doffy circus ireland's favorite circus is coming back to letter kenny to a new location at the kill toy roundabout for the bank holiday weekend see the globe of death wheel of steel the amazing later man and make on our new clown all in one breathtaking performance kill toy roundabout from wednesday first until sunday 6th of may special offer book this week before sunday 21st of april and get a free child ticket with adult ticket purchase click on doffy circus dot com and you