WEXFORD, IRELAND — It was a week of surprising sunshine, both in terms of weather and performances, for a group of Opera Theatre of St. Louis board members and patrons traveling in late October to London and Ireland with general director Timothy O'Leary.

The occasion was to bring opera patrons to see John Corigliano's "The Ghosts of Versailles," the first co-production by OTSL and Ireland's Wexford Festival Opera. It was the first such collaboration between the two companies; it won't be the last.

Partnerships with other opera companies help to keep costs down. For a small company like Opera Theatre, working with peers is a means of getting a bigger budget, to afford better production values. For a new or unusual work, the promise of additional performances makes it easier to get in-demand singers.

Working out co-productions seems to be a particular talent for OTSL's artistic director, James Robinson, whose "Nixon in China" has been presented in four other cities so far. Now Opera Theatre has agreed to a long-term partnership with Wexford.

It's a natural, O'Leary says. Wexford Festival Opera has "so much in common with Opera Theatre, from the focus on unusual repertoire, to the prized intimacy of the theater, to the contagious enthusiasm of an audience that gathers from far and wide year after year.

"Both companies also enjoy an uncanny level of devotion from their volunteers, from board members to volunteer concessionaires, which contributes in both places to an uncanny spirit of friendliness."

O'Leary, who led his first patrons field trip, added, "It's a particular pleasure for me to visit Ireland, where no one ever asks how to spell 'O'Leary.'"

The small group of patrons, which included Regional Arts Commission chairman Donna Wilkinson, started its weeklong overseas jaunt in London, where OTSL music director Stephen Lord was making his English National Opera conducting debut in the famed 1982 Jonathan Miller production of Giuseppe Verdi's "Rigoletto."

We saw it Oct. 23, the final night of the run. The production, set in New York's Little Italy in the 1950s, is one of the few updates that really works. It still retains its freshness after more than two decades.

Despite occasional rough playing in the orchestra, Lord had a musical triumph, conducting with a sure hand and well-considered tempos. The standout in the cast was Anthony Michaels-Moore as an unusually complex Rigoletto; he sang with beautiful tone and acted with intelligence.

As Rigoletto's daughter Gilda, Katherine Whyte — a former Gerdine Young Artist — was frumpily dressed (what does the Duke see in her?) and seemed uncomfortable throughout the first act. She opened up and found her character better as the opera continued, but the famous "Caro nome" disappointed.

Tenor Michael Fabiano (last seen in the Metropolitan Opera's "The Audition") looked good and swaggered nicely, but he sometimes muscled unattractively through the score, and not all the notes were there.

In Wexford, a Viking town in southeastern Ireland, the concentration is on performance. The Festival, founded in 1950, has a new theater that's both physically and acoustically a joy.

With limited funds and a tightly delineated site, the board decided to focus on the theater: The exterior is drab, and the public spaces tightly limited. But where it counts — in the auditorium — pains were taken to do things right. The theater is intimate and lovely, paneled in Canadian black walnut that's attractive to the eye and acoustically grateful.

St. Louis now has a great reputation among operagoers in Wexford, where "Ghosts of Versailles" was a hit. Seen Oct. 24, the performance shared many cast members with last summer's version in St. Louis, chief among them soprano Maria Kanyova's touching Marie Antoinette. Baritone Christopher Feigum reprised his Figaro, with Paula Murrihy returning as Cherubino.

There were some fine additions to the large cast, most notably Laura Vlasek Nolen's Samira. Nolen made a strong case for the role, which was written for Marilyn Horne: she's a real contralto, with a rich, evenly produced voice. She's got wonderful presence, and she moves better than Horne ever did, as this Samira's dance incorporated everything from Irish step dancing to a macarena that morphed into belly dancing, to terrific comic effect.

Sri Lanken soprano Kishani Jayasinghe brought a beautiful, distinctive soprano to the role of Rosina, while tenor Dominic Armstrong was a find as Almaviva.

OTSL regular Kiera Duffy did a solid job in the role of Florestine, but baritone George van Bergen was just adequate as Beaumarchais, a role that needs more dramatic oomph than he mustered.

The Chorus of the Wexford Festival Opera, aka the Prague Chamber Choir, sang raggedly and in execrable English, suffering more than one musical train wreck. It wasn't the fault of Michael Christie, who conducted with a sure hand. Robinson has refined his staging, and made some welcome additions to it. Taken as a whole, the evening was a triumph.

Wexford gives three productions each season. One was a double bill: Emmanuel Chabrier's "Une Education Manque (An Incomplete Education)," paired with Giacchino Rossini's "La Cambiale di Matrimonio (The Marriage Contract)."

They are both fairly mindless comedies, onto which director Roberto Recchia forced a deeply stupid concept: "Brave New World," with quotes from Aldous Huxley's novel projected onto the scrim, and bar-coded clones as characters, for a double bill of dramatic disaster. "Education" at least had good singing from Jayasinghe and Murrihy; "Cambiale" was a near mess, with the week's ugliest singing emanating from the brassy throat of tenor Giovanni Botta.

There was a far more pleasant surprise in the next day's opera, Gaetano Donizetti's little-known melodrama "Maria Padilla." I've always thought that there was no such thing as a lost masterpiece, but this comes close: I'd rather hear "Maria" again than another "Lucia" or any quantity of early Verdi. Although it also suffered from directorial conceptitis, the score and some fantastic singing more than made up for it.

Soprano Barbara Quintiliani overcame Silvia Aymonino's stunningly unflattering costuming (a floral house dress, topped with a purple sweater) to make us feel her passion and her grief. Even more impressive was tenor Adriano Graziani (who, despite the name, is from Wales) as her father; he brought a big, shining instrument, strong presence and effortless singing to the production. They were strongly supported by mezzo-soprano Ketevan Kemoklidze and baritone Marco Cura.

Not on the official tour was a special meeting between OTSL's O'Leary, Wilkinson and other board members and their counterparts at the Festival. Opera Theatre has a strong, longstanding tradition of patron giving and fundraising; Wexford, accustomed to European-style government funding, does not.

Wilkinson, by all accounts, gave the Irish an unmatched primer on the basics of using a board of directors to give and get the money that the arts require.