Tom Walsh's opera:

In 1951, the first ever Wexford Opera Festival (now known as 'Wexford Festival Opera') took place in a small town in the southeast corner of Ireland. This book traces the history of the Festival, from its establishment up to the present day. The uneasy shift from amateur status to becoming a more professional body characterized much of the life of the Festival. The book looks at the spectacular success of what T.J. Walsh, the founder of the Festival, had achieved and follows the story through the difficult period in the 1960s when Walsh felt that the Festival was taking a different direction than had been intended from its inception.