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17 November 2011
A Great Sixtieth
IT HAS been an Opera Festival which of itself was elevating before the music world.
It has set itself before visitors, natives, critics, holiday makers, seekers of excitement and powerful music to Olympic Eminence.
To create a crescendo of celebration the concluding night was bathed in honour.
Her Excellency, President McAleese and Senator McAleese paid their last official public visit of their period in Aras an Uachtarain, a period of unprecenteded national significance.
It was certainly the greatest day and probably the most spectacular conclusion we have ever seen.
Two unprecenteded events took place to honour Festival greats who richly deserved whatever honour and gratitude we could bestow on them.
On that last morning a plaque was unveiled by Vonnie O’Connor to her late lamented husband, a native of Gorey, a powerful and rebuilding dynamo
of a Festival teetering over a crumbling cliff. Later, before the magical Donizetti Opera, the President unveiled a plaque in The Founders Room to the great Dr. Tom Walsh, the first mover and vigorous shaker back in 1951.
It could be the instigator of a very interesting tradition. In the comparatively short lift of Chairmen and one lady Chairholder there ware those who can’t be remembered posthumous honour because they are alive (Editor: most amusing).
There were giants who as leaders of the team preserved the Opera Festival from other periods of peril and split. Sean Scallan was undeniably one, who must be remembered.
Since the Opera Festival should and would survive for centuries, unless County Wexford itself collapses, there will be more posthumous Chairman, though I pray for the surviving ones longevity piously.
Just as in Leinster House or Aras an Uachtarain with Presidents and Taoisigh, their memory should be proclaimed in brass or bronze in appropriate spaces.
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