At Kilkenny Arts Festival 2026
Gare St Lazare Ireland present a new production - a hybrid of Mihalovici and Beckett’s opera and the Beckett play its based on: Krapp’s Last Tape.
14 & 15 August 2026 2pm & 8pm.
The Watergate Theatre,
rehearsal images by Ewa Figaszewska
Music by Marcel Mihalovici
Rearranged by Andrew Synnott
Text/libretto by Samuel Beckett
The Last Tape is Marcel Mihalovici’s operatic collaboration with Samuel Beckett. Internationally acclaimed Irish theatre company Gare St Lazare Ireland continues its interdisciplinary exploration of the great Irish writer’s work, combining music, theatre and the visual arts. This production offers a rare opportunity to encounter one of Beckett’s few opera collaborations for its Irish premiere.
On every birthday Krapp makes a tape recording of his thoughts. Now approaching the end of his sixty-ninth year, he listens back to a recording made half a lifetime earlier and is confronted with the choices that led him to privilege some parts of his life over others. In this final tape, he weighs the cost of those decisions.
This production marks the twenty-sixth Beckett production directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett. In this third collaboration with internationally acclaimed singer Mark Padmore – singing the role of Krapp alongside actor Conor Lovett speaking it – they are joined by pianists Ellen Jansson and Izumi Kimura, percussionists Alex Petcu and Glen Lyons, under Grammy-nominated Elaine Kelly conducting Andrew Synnott’s new arrangement of Mihalovici’s original score.
Gare St Lazare Ireland leads the way in staging Samuel Beckettʼs plays and prose. Since 1996, the company has performed and developed works that are timeless (Waiting for Godot), cross-disciplinary (The Beckett Trilogy, How it Is), and hybrid (Shades Through A Shade, The Last Tape). Whether working independently or in collaboration, the company brings fresh interpretations and inventive approaches to Beckettʼs work. Their singular focus offers audiences and artists, in Ireland, the UK, France, and the USA and elsewhere, to new and dynamic ways of experiencing this Irish masterʼs legacy.
