Reviewed: Armonico Consortand Aslan

Armonico Consort

Mahony Hall, The Helix, Dublin

Mozart - The Magic Flute

ARMONICO CONSORT'S production of Mozart's Magic Flute at The Helix on Saturday was a patchy affair. Although, to the best of my knowledge, the performance marked this British company's Dublin debut, the production was allowed to go ahead without the essential information normally provided in printed programmes.

No cast details had been announced in advance. Yet, in spite of this extraordinary situation, and with ticket prices ranging up to €42, no programmes were for sale, no photocopies of cast details were made available, no announcements were made to enlighten the audience about who was singing, nor was there even a posting of the relevant information anywhere that I could see.

The performance had its oddities, too. The playing of the small orchestra, placed at the extreme left of the heavily-curtained stage, included some of the most remarkable moments of insecurity and indecision I've heard in an opera performance for a long time. And the balances struck by the conductor (billed in advance as Christopher Monks) didn't always seem to take account of the varying strengths of the singing voices.

The main circular platform of the set was placed before a large, jigsaw doorway, painted to echo the visual style of Henri Rousseau, and a tiger, like a trademark borrowed from the artist's Traumgarten, stood in iconic pose on the right of the stage. The costumes conveyed a kind of classic stage antiquity, with Papageno allowed a rather more timeless bird-catcher garb.

The Pamina was fresh and easy in tone, while her Tamino presented himself with a more even-tempered neutrality. The Queen of the Night sang with vocal heft, but was happiest away from the high target practice for which this role is so notorious.

Her bête-noire, the fair-minded Sarastro, was sometimes firm and sonorous, sometimes disturbingly wavery.

The Three Ladies and Three Boys shared the general air of variability, although the Three Boys' best moments were very good. But the evening's greatest consistency came from the doltish pantomime of Papageno, whose antics certainly seemed to keep the many young listeners in the audience well enough amused. - Michael Dervan

Aslan

McHugh's, Drogheda

DUBLIN BAND Aslan committed the cardinal sin of not clocking out years ago, thereby allowing their original status of hard boys of Irish rock to mutate into middle age. But here's the thing: over 25 years after they first formed, they are still out there, selling out the likes of the Olympia and Vicar Street, playing in far flung corners of the country as well as performing overseas. Here's another thing: Aslan and their fans have as much hip quotient as an iodine tablet, but hold onto each other with a vice-like grip.

Such loyalty on both sides of the fence is apparent in the smaller gigs they play; the bar has been stuffed since 9pm and the band aren't on for another two hours; the provincial fans amount to a gathering of the silent majority, divided by age and dress sense, but brought together by the band's music.

Most of these people don't care much, you'd imagine, for the esoteric likes of Sigur Ros or Final Fantasy; they have heard of Arctic Monkeys, but you'd hazard a 10/1 bet that they don't know anything about The Last Shadow Puppets. These people like their music relatively uncomplicated, delivered with the minimum of fuss but with a few tasty guitar licks and some beefy riffs.

Aslan have never been a musically-complicated rock act, a fact that for some curious reason irks certain critics. The band's longevity is also an annoyance, yet their back catalogue is peppered with some of the best least complicated rock songs ever written by an Irish band.

Simplicity is often scorned by the very people who also sneer at bands from Yes to Radiohead, so Aslan know a hiding to nothing when they see it coming their way.

Yet they still rock, they still deliver the goods, and their new material is just as solid as their old. What's not to like, admire, respect? - Tony Clayton-Lea