OPERA Theatre Company, in the most recent recital of its Winter Song Series in Dublin Castle, presented the gifted mezzo soprano Buddug, Verona James. I say gifted because she sang with enviable facility in no less than eight languages Italian, French, German, Spanish, English, Welsh, Irish and Scots - and in as many musical styles. She also showed an ability to move into the world of folk song, which is rare in a classically trained singer.
Even a Spaniard would find it hard to equal the plangent intensity of her singing of de Falla's Siete Canciones Populares, and in James MacMilclan's setting (1994) of a Ballad by the Scots poet William Soutar one could hear all the inflections of a traditional Scottish singer. Macmillan's piano part was extremely restrained; this was wise, for, Pwyll ap Sion's arrangement of the Welsh version of Lord Randal called so much attention to itself that the power of the words was diminished.
Welsh song was also represented in an eerie setting by Elfyn M. Jones of W. J Gruffyd's powerful poem, Ywen Llanddeiniolen, about a graveyard yew. Here, Jones found an appropriate idiom, the melodic line rising and falling in a wailing slant, and the ideal interpreter in Verona James, herself from Wales.
She was delightfully German in Schubert and Schumann, and spiritedly French in Satie's Trois Melodies, so it was no surprise that she was able to deal confidently with the fantastic obliquities of Gerald Barry's Water Parted, six songs extricated from his opera The Intelligence Park. She was ably supported by her accompanist, Valerie Kampmeier (piano), who showed an equal mastery of style, both in the songs and in the pieces for solo piano by Jones, MacMillan and Barry.
