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It's festival time in small-town Ireland, the annual excuse for drink and merriment. In September, the big occasion is for lonely hearts, who may find the partners of their dreams at Lisdoonvarna's Matchmaking Festival in Clare. And the first week in October is your chance to buy a horse at Ballinasloe, County Galway's biggest horse fair.

Few visitors bother to dress up for any of these events. In fact, nobody will bat an eyelid if you choose to wander about in a shabby old jacket and trousers held together with string- after all, that's just normal garb for the typical Irish festival-going farmer! But not at the Wexford Festivaldear me, no.

This glittering event takes place during the last two weeks of October in a little maritime town on Ireland's sunny southeastern coast, the last place you'd expect to find an internationally renowned opera festival. The best way to enjoy it is in full evening dress-classy tuxedos and posh cocktail frocks.

Even the most culturally challenged couch potato has undoubtedly heard of operas like Carmen and Die

Fledermaus. But when have you had a chance to enjoy the likes of Tosca, I Cavalieri di Ekebu, or Sarlatan, the tragi-comic tale of a Bohemian quack who falls madly in love with a beautiful hypochondriac? Come to this year's 18-day-long Wexford Festival to experience them.

First-class festival
Ever since the festival began in 1951, its aim has been to blow off the cobwebs from operas that have been unjustly neglected or forgotten. Three rarely seen operas are rescued from  obscurity and performed each year. The 1998 outing of Sarlatan will be the first on stage since a performance 60 years ago in Brno, Czechoslovakia. The career of its composer, Pavel Haas, was cut brutally short when he was deported to Auschwitz in 1944.

Running this year from October 15 to November 1, the Wexford Festival always attracts a cosmopolitan crowd of opera buffs. But you can also sample street theater, poetry recitals, antique fairs, stand-up comedy, and music ranging from foot-tapping Irish tunes to the haunting lament of gypsy violins. The town takes on a carnival atmosphere, with storekeepers competing for the prize of best festive window and artists and audiences alike thronging the bars and caf6s along Main Street and the Quays.

Tickets for the three showpiece operas are not cheap: prices are IE40 during the week and IE50 on weekends for each performance. Daytime and late-night events are rather more affordable, costing between IE6 and IE12. If you want to catch one of the afternoon's Scenesfirom the Opera events (90 minutes of Carmen, Die Fledermaus, Puccini's La Faniculla del West) tickets are just If,7.

Rooms for a song
Hotel and guesthouse brochures can be obtained from the Tourist Off ice, Crescent Quay, Wexford, County Wexford; tel. (353-53) 23111. An excellent find is the three-star Ferrycarrig Hotel, just outside town and with wonderful views of the Slaney Estuary. It has a waterfront restaurant, a health and fitness club, and a 20meter indoor swimming pool.

Prices per person (including breakfast) for a weekend break are 12115; a three-night midweek stay costs 12120. Contact the Ferrycarrig Hotel at Ferrycarrig Bridge, Wexford; tel. (353-53) 20999.

Musically trained
Wexford town is 2 1/2 hours from Dublin by rail with three trains a day in each direction. If you don't want to go to the bother of changing hotels and taking your luggage down to Wexford, there will be special Opera Trains from Dublin on October 15th for Fosca and October 22nd for Sarlatan. Priced at 12107, all-in tickets include rail travel, dinner on board, transfer to and from the theater, the ticket for the opera, and supper on board the train on the return journey. Contact Irish Rail, 35 Lower Abbey St., Dublin 1; tel. (353- 1) 7034083.

Great performances
FOSCa. Another cheery tale of unrequited love, abduction and eventual suicide. Sung in Italian, this opera was first performed in 1873; it was composed by Carlos Gomes, sometimes called "the Brazilian Verdi". The sister of Gajolo, an unscrupulous pirate, Fosca falls in love with her brother's handsome captive, Paolo, whose wealthy Venetian family eventually pays a ransom. But Paolo is betrothed to Delia, which doesn't exactly thrill the jealous Fosca. On the happy couple's wedding day, Fosca abducts the bride-to-be whilst Gajolo and his pals get on with the serious business of robbing the wedding guests. The bridegroom is also abducted (again), Gajolo gets arrested, and Fosca decides she will only spare Paolo's life if Delia kills herself. Paolo refuses to let this happen, so Fosca orders his execution. Just before this happens, a repentant Gajolo reappears and releases the prisoners. What can poor unloved Fosc do now? What else but stab herself in the heart.

I Cavalied di Ekebu. Composed by Riccardo Zandonai and sung in Italian, this tale is set against a Swedish backdrop and relates the strange story of Giosta Berling, an alcoholic pastor who has been driven from his church by an unforgiving congregation. When not drowning his sorrows, Giosta dreams of his beloved Anna, whose father will not contemplate a match between the pair. Eventually Giosta meets up with the mysterious figure of La Comandante, a powerful woman who controls an ironworks and presides over the equally mysterious Knights of Ekebu. Giosta joins the Knights and wins Anna's love, but her outraged father invokes the devil to destroy La Comandante and all her works. The forges are abandoned, the workers thrown on the streets to starve, and Anna's life is one long round of being cursed by the townsfolk. Obviously, all their troubles are attributed to her for taking up with a defrocked priest. But for once, this is a story with a happy ending. Well, it is if you discount the death of La Comandante, who expires in eerie firelight to the sound of ringing hammers.

Sariatan. Sung in Czech, the story is set in medieval Moravia and tells of a traveling doctor called Pustrpalk who journeys from town to town in the company of a theatrical troupe. Although already married to the jealous Rosina, the hapless doctor is smitten by the charms of Amaranta, a beautiful hypochondriac. She, however, is guarded by a mad monk, Jochimus, who accuses Pustrpalk of being a charlatan. And so it would seem after Jochimus falls sick and dies on the doctor's operating table. Accused of murder, the doctor is forced to flee and ends his days in a tavern, a paranoid alcoholic.