Youth orchestras, harp concerts, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Bulmers World Music festival at the August weekend: Cork is weighed down by a musical calendar at venues from the City Hall to the Opera House or the oriental pinnacles of the marquees in the Munster Agricultural Show Grounds.

But if one concert is to remain in the public memory of this year it will probably be that given by Andrea Bocelli at Collins' Barracks. This was an unprecedented occasion with more than 8,000 people gathered in the largest barracks square in Europe. It will be remembered for its endearing hero, Bocelli himself, and his obliging programme of familiar songs. It will be remembered for its heat, which lasted until the late summer dusk. It will also be remembered for its sense of the unusual - so many Cork citizens have never been inside the barracks walls - and for its carnival atmosphere generated by such an adventure. And it will be remembered for the disruption caused by latecomers long after the interval, a group distinguished by their red ribbons with very large VIP signs.

Another lasting memory will be of the mass of humanity walking down the great slope of St Patrick's Hill after the concert. This was one route back to the city centre and those who took it joined a contented, easy-going throng, many stopping to relish the view of illuminated steeples and spires seen from Audley Place or of the lights of St Patrick's Street unfolding like a banner below the long steep incline of the hill. It seemed on this enchanted evening that, for all its pretensions, the city remains a loveable and lovely place, a transfiguration that should be the core business of Cork 2005 but that in this case was achieved by Opera 2005.