Who am I:
Michael Londra
What do I do:
Singer
River:
Barrow (with a little Nore as my da is from Kilkenny)
Q1) Favorite Quote
Colm Toibin’s description of Wexford Festival Opera which describes exactly how i feel about it
“Thus began my adventures in opera. This did not help me to improve my social situation, nor did it enrich my experiences as a tourist. It was more serious than that. It simply entered my spirit and it lingered there and it became powerful. It offered me a relationship to soaring beauty, to the idea that there was a world beyond the visible world, or the material world, or the everyday world, which was filled with mystery. It offered a drama of human striving at its most developed and serious, it suggested mystery, as human relations are filled with mystery, as light is filled with mystery, as sound is filled with mystery. It paved the way for a life lived more sonorously, a life open to possibility and otherness and strangeness.
What I am saying is that it taught me how to live.”
Q2) Favourite place to visit
Wexford Opera House. It somehow retained the magic of the old Theater Royal within the walls. It is the anchor for the town.
Q3) Favourite thing about where I come from?
Wexford people look out into the world. They are interested in what the world brings to them and care about what they offer. We are confident and proud of what we present to the world. As a result, wherever I sing on the planet, someone will talk about the Festival Opera with reverence. The Festival, the town and it’s people are unique.
Q4) And another thing….
Currently in Nashville and miss home. Don’t get me wrong. I love that I travel the world with my singing. I’ve lived abroad my whole adult life but Wexford will always be special for me. A lot of people shut down when they go home. I come alive.