NCH, Dublin, Fri 8pm €15-€49.50 01-4170000
HAPPY DAYS: ENNISKILLEN INTERNATIONAL BECKETT FESTIVAL
Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh Fri-Mon 048-66323110
ERGODOS MUSICIANS Project Arts Centre, Dublin Fri, Sat 8pm €20 01-8819613
Soprano Danielle de Niese was born in Australia of Sri Lankan descent, studied in the US and has made her reputation in Europe in baroque opera, most notably as Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2005 (she married the festival chairman, Gus Christie, four years later). Her Irish début, with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, under Neil Thomson, at the NCH on Friday, features arias by Handel, Mozart, Delibes, Rossini and Donizetti and orchestral pieces by Mozart, Gluck, Falla and Donizetti. If you want to know what all the fuss is about, you can watch de Niese in all-singing, all-dancing mode in an excerpt from the Glyndebourne Giulio Cesare at url.ie/fq2i.
The new Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival has a strong musical element, hardly a surprise given the great writer’s interest in music and the fact that the festival has been masterminded by Seán Doran, former artistic director and chief executive of English National Opera. Between Friday and Monday there will be opportunities to hear pianist Llyr Williams play Haydn, Schubert and Liszt, recitals by the Vienna Piano Trio (including Beethoven’s Archduke and Ghost Trios), a new Beckett Songbook by Gavin Bryars (in a programme that also includes The Sinking of the Titanic), tenor Ian Bostridge in Schuberts Winterreise, and recitals by soprano Sophie Daneman and mezzo soprano Ruby Philogene. The venues include a number of churches in the town, as well as the Palladian surroundings of Castle Coole.
The two composers behind the music production company Ergodos, Garrett Sholdice and Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, are presenting a pair of operas at Dublins Project Arts Centre on Friday and Saturday. Sholdice’s Recueillement and Schlepper-Connolly’s Heimat bring together music, film, dance, and, of course, voice, though there’s just one singer (mezzo soprano Michelle O’Rourke) and three instrumentalists. Opera on the most intimate of scales.
