MORRÍGAN
Cork Opera House
Rating: 5/5
If it is possible, or even necessary, to mythologise a myth then this premiere of Morrígan convinces on both terms. Composer John O’Brien and librettist Éadaoin O’Donoghue have run their modern sensibilities through a legend as passive as most legends are and by capturing a story within its own idiom have brought it almost brazenly to triumphant life as opera.
Like other heroic tales, like the tales of Troy or Camelot, the ancient tragedy of Deirdre and the sons of Usna is familiar in outline but by now a little dusty. Morrígan snaps it into a brimming immediacy by accepting it as an event of a particular era, among people who understand their rules and rulers, their curses and blessings. It is not of our day, and it is this respect for the source material that allows such a bravura flaunting of orchestral, vocal and theatrical potential which makes this Cork Opera House and Everyman co-production so comprehensively thrilling..
It is not all declamatory, although there is indeed a lot of declaring to be done. The wonder here is how so immense a reimagining can evoke humanity’s frailties to pierce a battle with a lullaby. The narrative is sung, and if especially in the first act the hope is that these soaring voices might offer a sustained melodic arc, the hope is realised in the tenderness of the act II duet from Kim Sheehan’s Deirdre and Simon Morgan’s Naoise.
Despite a battery of percussion and annunciators drumming from instruments played distractingly on stage (Patrick Nolan and Patrick Lynch), O’Brien’s orchestration is sympathetic to O’'Donoghue’s lyric wording, while the orchestra itself under Conor Palliser maintains a responsive structure of theme and counterpoint The principals of the big cast, which includes a strong chorus, are a psychologically convincing Jung Soo Yun as Conor Mac Nessa, Majella Cullagh as the midwife and seer, Joe Corbett, Julian Tovey and Viktor Priebe with Liv Amerie Gregorio as Morrígan. .
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There are nits to pick but not right now in a production in which almost every aspect of staging enhances each other; the textured background to Alyson Cummin’s gorgeously simple and functional sloping set is frayed into significance by Stephen Dodd’s lighting, by roughened costuming from Sinead Cuthbert and by the team for movement, props and make-up who seem all of one commitment to this musically and visually daring enactment of an Iron Age which may be neither so iron nor so distant as we thought.
Continues at Cork Opera House tomorrow and on Sunday, July 31st
