Irish Times critics review a selection of performances including Cecilia Bartoli at the National Concert Hall and Cúigear Chonamara at An Taibhdhearc, Galway
Cecilia Bartoli at the National Concert Hall, Dublin
It's quite an achievement to fill the National Concert Hall for an evening of music by Antonio Salieri. A giant of the musical scene in Vienna during his lifetime, Salieri (1750-1825) has long been a neglected composer. It is also his misfortune to be remembered not by his music but by the villainous role concocted for him in Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus.
Following her engagement with the music of Vivaldi and Gluck, the Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has turned her attention to Salieri, recording a CD of his work, among other things. She brought to the NCH a programme of his arias and overtures with London's Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, directed from the violin by Alison Bury.
Bartoli is one of the most engaging singers before the public today. She's got the voice, the personality and the pulling power to forge a new listenership for someone like Salieri, one of those composers whose skills were of an order completely out of line with the places they have been allotted in the modern repertory.
Bartoli's selection ranged from the sombre pathos of Misera Abbandonata from Palmira, Regina Di Persia, which weaves its peculiar magic through an accompaniment for clarinets and bassoons, to the exuberance of E Voi Da Buon Marito from La Cifra, in which the prospective bride details the instruments she does and doesn't want at her wedding, allowing Salieri - plus, of course, Bartoli and the alert players of the orchestra - scope for much amusing demonstrative imitation.
But however much Bartoli can move listeners with tones of creamy contemplation (in a scene from Armida) or dazzle with the virtuoso flourishes of the arias that ended each half of the concert (Vi Sono Sposa E Amante from La Fiera Di Venezia and Sulle Mie Tempie from La Secchia Rapita) the fate of Salieri will ultimately depend on how these arias fare when they are undertaken by lesser performers and how thoroughly they impress in the context of the complete operas.
A hint of perspective was offered in Bartoli's encores by Gluck and Haydn, where the balance between effect and musical content was of an order Salieri never reached and the pointedness of the singing had an even sharper edge.
Michael Dervan
Cúigear Chonamara at An Taibhdhearc, Galway
The characters of Mícheál Ó Conghaile's first play are prisoners of their pasts. Coilimín (Peadar Ó Treasaigh) is a wreck of a man, struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife, 25 years previously. He takes refuge in page-three girls, bingo and the literature of Jehovah's Witnesses. His wife's death has also cast a shadow over his two sons, Darach (Peadar Cox) and Danny (Seán Ó Tarpaigh), both of whom have many skeletons in the cupboard.
Ó Conghaile explores guilt, loss, the destructiveness of dysfunctional relationships and the eternally elusive nature of the truth. But the play sags at times, and the pace falters considerably towards the end of the first half. You can't help feeling that some of the long monologues would be more suited to a novel than a play.
The second half picks up considerably, though, and there are moments of great tenderness, particularly when Coilimín mistakes his transvestite son for his dead wife. The writing is superb throughout, and the dialogue pulsates with nerve and edge.
Ó Tarpaigh and Cox complement each other brilliantly as the rival brothers, and Sabyna Seoighe is superb as the spurned lover. Peadar Ó Treasaigh and Máirín Mhic Lochlainn are also good in their parts. Darach Mac Con Iomaire's production steers a brilliant line between playfulness and menace, keeping the audience in a permanent state of suspense and uncertainty.
Quibbles notwithstanding, Cúigear Chonamara is a thought-provoking and stylistic play by a writer at the height of his powers.
Runs until Saturday
Breandán Delap
Boy Called Rubbish at The Ark, Dublin
His real name is Mush, but he is known as Rubbish to family and acquaintances, a tag tending to build up his humility. His stepmother is a dreadful tyrant, dragging him around behind her and subjecting him to such ordeals as sheltering her with a tarpaulin when she feels inclined to go to the toilet, using a bucket that he happens to be keeping a pet frog in.
Already the laughs are gathering momentum as the two performers offer a sparkling display of slapstick humour in the Laurel and Hardy style - a duo they also physically resemble. Ellis Pearson is Stan, complete with whinny and amiable vacuity and a role model for Rubbish; Bheki Mkhwane has Oliver's portly aplomb, which he injects into a kaleidoscope of roles. They are both grown men, probably in their 30s, but are manifestly expert in working at the level of young children.
Rubbish gets involved in a series of accidents that spell trouble. Visiting his favourite dump, he finds a cow and is soon involved in an ownership dispute. When the real owner turns up he is forced to flee, fording a steam (a basin containing some water) and splashing the audience.
As the story proceeds, taking in school, its master and other authority figures, similar forays into the watchers' ranks become quite frequent, the cause of much slightly nervous hilarity.
So it goes, climaxing in a runaway car that Rubbish can hardly control - but he does, saving lives and becoming a hero. An inventive ending is contrived before our eyes, and the charm is wound up. It is a delightful entertainment with a difference from South Africa, a holistic hoot.
At Baboró in Galway and Sonas in Louisburgh, Co Mayo, this week
Gerry Colgan
The Lady Of The Lake at the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire
The story of the Lady of the Lake is making its debut in Independent Ballet Wales's production, but it already has all the ingredients for a ballet plot: a mysterious, other-worldly woman, a flawed worldly male and a sub-plot full of villagers and other characters. It's based on a Welsh folk tale in which Rhiwallon falls in love with a beautiful woman from the lake who promises to marry him but will return to the lake should he strike her three times.
Choreographer Darius James gives the story a literal treatment. Apart from a few excursions into sub-plots all of the action is acted out in a straightforward narrative that not so much gathers momentum as rushes to its conclusion.
The climax, in which Rhiwallon pursues the Lady of the Lake as she returns to Lake Llyn y Fan, is suitably sweeping, but the reason she returns - the three blows - is skirted over, unexplained. Regular principal dancers Lisia Moala (the Lady) and Kier Briody (Rhiwallon) have the task of carrying the plot, and they seem more comfortable luxuriating in the "love" pas de deux than carrying the story forward in the more narrative sections.
Moala brings gorgeous line and expanding space to her dancing, but in Kier Briody she has a nervy and sometimes unsupportive partner. He is bound and tight in his movement, as are other male dancers, in contrast to the exuberant physical dancing from Anna Cervantes and, particularly, Amy Doughty as wide-eyed village girls. Larrisa Law, known to Irish audiences through her strong roles with Ballet Ireland, is the worrying mother, always articulate and convincing.
At Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, today and tomorrow before touring
Michael Seaver
Ulster Orchestra with Nicolae Moldoveanu
at the Ulster Hall, Belfast
Music for the Royal Fireworks - Handel arr Harty. . . Piano Concerto No 1 - Tchaikovsky. . . . The Starry Dynamo In The Machinery Of Night . . . -
Philip Hammond. Symphony No 2, The Four Temperaments - Nielsen
Although Philip Hammond's The Starry Dynamo In The Machinery Of Night, premiered two years ago by Barry Douglas and Camerata Ireland, takes its title from Allen Ginsberg's Howl, and although the composer describes it as gothic, dark-hued and slightly melodramatic, the prevailing tone of this nocturnal fantasy is reflective. But as a moody, rather romantic study in atmosphere this 15-minute piece worked well.
The small ensemble here included the pianist Freddy Kempf, seated modestly in the body of the orchestra and entering and exiting with his fellow performers. Unfortunately, the BBC's simultaneous broadcast reportedly gave undue prominence to the piano, whose ostinato patterns accompany the other players rather than vice versa.
We had already heard Kempf as a featured soloist in the Tchaikovsky, however. In the outer movements his octaves were as rapid as anyone could wish, but the middle section of the second movement became an exercise in prestidigitation, and with an unrefined accompaniment from Nicolae Moldoveanu the performance was a series of events that failed to develop a sustaining emotional narrative.
Unnecessarily prominent brass, evident even in Harty's arrangement of the fireworks music, became increasingly problematic in the outer movements of the Nielsen, where the heavy scoring demands a strict control of balance from the conductor. The playing was punchy enough, but the best efforts of the hard-working strings were effectively negated. One could sympathise with a fellow listener who wondered which of the four temperaments the final movement was meant to express.
Dermot Gault
