The double- bill of Ferrucio Busoni's Arlecchino and Igor Stravinsky's operatic ballet, Pulcinella, opens on 1 June at Johnstown Castle. An Italian singer- songwriter of the highest repute, Lucio Dalla is the director of the production and he promises to present opera as it may never have been seen before in Wexford.

Just south of Wexford town, the castle, one of Ireland's finest examples of 19thcentury gothic revival architecture, was donated to the Irish nation in 1945. Since that year, the Department of Agriculture has made its home there, with the EPA and Teagasc now also enjoying the beauty of the 994-acre estate, including its three artificial lakes.

A sneak preview of the industrious festival preparations there recently revealed Ireland's largest ever temporary indoor theatre. Sitting triumphantly on the front lawn of the castle is a 66metre-long, 14-metre-high, 750-seat venue that will host the Wexford Festival Opera for 18 days.

Michael Hunt, CEO of the festival, informed me that the structure alone has cost 1m to erect. In Joe Vanek's innovative interior design, the original circular pond and fountain of the castle's front lawn will serve as the focal point of the foyer area. If you thought the dome at the K Club for the Ryder Cup was impressive, think again.

The festival is, of course, happening earlier this year than its normal autumn slot . . .a once-off measure that audiences could very easily get used with the luxury of preopera picnics, trips to the agricultural museum and garden walks.

But, perhaps, compared to the venue in which the 2008 festival will reside, there is a slight imbalance. Believe it or not, Ireland's first ever opera house, in Wexford town centre, is almost built.

The 33m structure, for which the government has granted 26m, is set to be completed and handed over in July 2008.

Raising the remaining money should not be difficult, with 2m already in the bank and a set-sponsorship programme to be launched at this year's festival . . . all that before local money is raised.

As articulated by Hunt, the provisional plans for this new opera house sound like something this country will never have seen before. That an established theatre and dance company from abroad, complete with their own resources and management, will be engaged for a 12-month residency to make the new building, with its state-of-the-art "making" facilities, its homebase, is a certainty.

"The choice of resident company is going to be critical.

In the programming of work for this building, you express the artistic profile and identity of it, which comes primarily from the main festival, so we have to employ careful and artistic thinking in this respect. We want to be able to choose work that responds to the scale of the building and to the audience, specifically that of younger people, that we ourselves want to develop for the festival. We don't have the need to have something on in the house every night of the week so this space definitely won't be just another stopping point on the tour circuit.

"Wexford is already a centre of excellence for opera in Ireland. We want to create this as a centre of excellence for opera, internationally.

Essentially we want to programme for this as for a French or small German opera house where there is theatre, dance and seven to nine fullscale operas every year. We're not going to be able to do that in the very near future but we're going to have a damn good try all the same."