‘Women and War’: Representations in the Creative Arts

Recorded September 19th, 2023. *Please note that this discussion contains topics of sexual violence and graphic descriptions of war. Please listen at your own discretion. ‘Women and War’ is the theme of the 2023 Wexford Festival Opera (24 Oct-5 Nov). Developed by Wexford’s Artistic Director, Rosetta Cucchi, this year’s programme uses the medium of opera to explore how war is experienced, endured, and articulated by women. The three main stage operas at Wexford will be: Zoraida di Granata (1822) by Gaetano Donizetti; L’Aube Rouge (1911) by Camille Erlanger; and La Ciociara (Two Women) (2015) by Marco Tutino, based on the novel by Alberto Moravia. In anticipation of this innovative programme, the Trinity Long Room Hub is hosting a special discussion to explore the representation of ‘Women and War’ in literature, theatre, music, and visual art. The Festival’s acclaimed Artistic Director Rosetta Cucchi will join the celebrated Irish Times foreign correspondent Lara Marlowe and the Trinity Long Room Hub Director, Eve Patten, for a wide-ranging conversation on the themes and vision behind this year’s Wexford Festival Opera. This unique collaboration event, which will include both film and music excerpts from the opera programme itself, is open to all and not to be missed. Speakers: Rosetta Cucchi is the Artistic Director of the Wexford Festival Opera and an experienced director in many of the world’s greatest opera houses. She is also a pianist, and has a master’s degree in Theatre Studies from the University of Bologna. From 2006 to 2018, she was the Artistic Director of Fondazione and Symphonic Orchestra Arturo Toscanini, Parma. Her most recent and future directing projects include Tutino’s La Ciociara, Wexford Festival, Figaro and La Bohème, Boston Lyric Opera, Adriana Lecouvreur, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Rossini’s Otello, Rossini Festival Pesaro, Eugene Onegin, Opera Omaha, USA, and L’Amico Fritz, Teatro del Maggio Musical Fiorentino. Lara Marlowe became a foreign correspondent for The Irish Times in 1996. Since her official retirement in April 2023 she has continued to contribute regularly to the Irish Times and radio stations in France, Ireland and the UK. She has worked extensively in France, the Middle East and the US, and reported on the war in Ukraine in 2022. Before the Irish Times, she wrote for Time Magazine, the Financial Times and the International Herald Tribune, covering many major world events and conflicts. Lara has received four press awards for her work for The Irish Times and was also awarded a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur for her contribution to Franco-Irish relations. In 2020, she published the best-selling memoir Love in a Time of War, My Years with Robert Fisk. Eve Patten is Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute and Professor of English at Trinity College, Dublin. She lectures and writes in the area of nineteenth and twentieth-century British and Irish literary history and has a special interest in the literature of war. Her most recent book is Ireland, Revolution, and the English Modernist Imagination (2022), and previous publications include Imperial Refugee: Olivia Manning's Fictions of War (2012), and, as co-editor with Richard Pine, Literatures of War (2008). Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/