Arts Reviews

Irish Times critics give their verdicts

Orfeo ed Euridice Gaiety Theatre, Dublin

Opera Ireland's new production of Gluck's most famous opera tackles the difficulties of the libretto head-on. The scene changes requested - a cypress grove, the underworld, the meadows and bowers of the bright Elysian fields, the dark grotto, the temple of Cupid - are not represented. Indeed, they are barely suggested, as the stage of the Gaiety Theatre has been transformed into a dark box, lined and floored with what looks like black marble with a curtained window at the rear. No one has to struggle with the flowing robes of classical costume as everyone - nymphs, shepherds, Furies, monsters and the three characters, Orfeo, Euridice and Cupid - is dressed in 1930s style. The many dances that punctuate the action and might have curbed its progress are danced with such furious energy that they actually seem to hasten the plot.

Eight dancers from CoisCéim and three children augmented the Opera Ireland chorus; and the leading characters were often sucked into the whirl of activity. So fertile were the inventive imaginations of David Bolger (director and choreographer) and of Monica Frawley (set and costume designer) that the eye was constantly titillated; to such an extent, indeed, that at times one might wonder whether one was attending a ballet with incidental songs or a sung drama with incidental dances. Even the overture was enlivened by a pantomime purporting to show Euridice's death from a serpent-bite, though the use of a faint and blurred projection of a girl in a swimming-pool with a black cord round her neck was more mystifying than explicatory.

Orfeo, sung with much passion and acted with athletic vigour by the Italian countertenor, Flavio Oliver, is encouraged by Cupid, sung by Daire Halpin, to enter the underworld and recover Euridice, sung by Ailish Tynan. By the power of his music he succeeds but, forbidden to look at her until they have regained the upper world, and forbidden to explain this prohibition, he cannot make Euridice understand that he still loves her and most of the third and final act is devoted to a quarrel between the lovers. Orfeo eventually relents and looks back, with fatal consequences. However, Cupid intervenes and, contrary to the basic myth, a happy ending is unexpectedly reached.

If I have not mentioned the music so far it is because the pantomime element had been so strong; but the great triumph of the evening was the playing of the RTÉCO under Laurent Wagner. Here was the nobility, the purity and the restraint that Gluck was aiming at. The pantomime could not avoid touches of the circus and the fancy dress ball, but the music was always dignified, even at its most impassioned, avoiding any over-emphasis, which cannot be said of the protagonist. In a way it was as if there were two worlds proceeding side by side and liable to clash against each other from time to time. The human drama on the stage seemed to originate from a different mind from that which ruled in the orchestral pit; the first was Expressionistic, the latter looked back towards that imaginary time when music had magical power and Orpheus with his lute could calm the animals and move the trees.

There will be further performances on Thursday and Saturday Douglas Sealy

Jackson Browne Olympia Theatre, Dublin

When Jackson Browne sang the lines from Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate on Friday night - "Sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder where the years have gone" - he could have been echoing the thoughts of the bulk of the packed audience. He also must have been wondering if anybody in the audience knew anything other than the songs from his classic 1970s albums, Jackson Browne, For Everyman, Late for the Sky, The Pretender and Running on Empty.

It was his own fault. Browne, the quintessential American west coast singer-songwriter in the 1970s, when west coast music dominated the airwaves, began his solo concert by announcing that there was no setlist. He thus opened the floodgates to a cacophony of requests which continued through the two-hour plus set.

As such there was little discernible rhythm to Browne's performance, with no light and shade in the song selection. He finally rebelled and, in his polite manner, requested that he be allowed sing some songs he actually wanted to sing.

The frustration of all this is that Browne has moved on, even if much of his audience hasn't - though he looked better than most of us. For instance, the title track of his most recent studio album, The Naked Ride Home, is the voice of a more seasoned individual than the twentysomething seeker of the 1970s and he is now a respected and valuable voice on human rights. However, when you are flogging a greatest hits collection it is understandable that they would form the core of the set, though unlike Dylan, for example, Browne rarely seeks to reinvent his songs. An exception was Cocaine. The ode to loose living's premier drug was transformed into a "rehab" tale of white lines and black crosses.

That said, despite the ludicrous sight of a solo artist surrounded by 14 guitars and an electric piano, Browne managed to strike the right chord more often than not. Songs such as Before the Deluge and Fountain of Sorrow, despite the years, retain their intensity and conviction. And while he has failed to lure new converts to his cause in any great number, he remains a key figure in the eyes and ears of his loyal fans. Joe Breen

NCC/Edwards National Gallery, Dublin

Gesualdo/Treacher - Ave Sanctissima Maria Gesualdo - Sicut ovis ad occisionem ductus est. Jerusalem, surge, et exuete vestibus jucunditatis. Plange quasi virgo, plebs mea Gesualdo/Stravinsky - Tres sacrae cantiones Gesualdo - Sospirava il mio core (prima parte). O mal nati messaggi (seconda parte). O dolorosa gioia. Dolcissima mia vita

Peter Eötvös - Hochzeitsmadrigal

Warlock - The full heart. Corpus Christi. Benedicamus Domino

So far, the National Chamber Choir's current concert series - entitled Immortals - has included welcome musicological inserts spoken by the visiting conductors as they work through programmes built around their chosen "immortal" composer.

The latest instalment in the series featured Monteverdi's contemporary, Carlo Gesualdo, remembered as much for his trail-blazing use of chromaticism and dissonance as for the fact that he murdered his wife and her lover. Conductor Terry Edwards pointed out that there is no longer an academic consensus that Gesualdo's extraordinary harmonic pungency was rooted in his enduring contrition following the murders. More recent scholarship is more dismissive of the composer's personal circumstances and contends that he was simply using a style then favoured by a number of his contemporaries.

The newer view seemed quite persuasive in the context of the NCC's performance of a selection of Gesualdo's sacred pieces, some in completions by Stravinsky and Graham Treacher.

They are considerably tamer than his madrigals, and Edwards conducted within narrow dynamic parameters so that the image of a tortured soul prostrate before God hardly leapt out.

Even the madrigals in the programme were not among the most illustrative of the heart-wrenching poignancy that Gesualdo can achieve. This was best heard in Dolcissima mia vita in which the descending, chromatic figure on the word morire had a real impact.

The concert went into a higher gear with a shift to the 20th century and to the repertoire upon which Edwards has built his reputation. The best singing of the evening came in The full heart, a part song by Peter Warlock dedicated to the memory of Gesualdo. Written around 1917, the piece anticipates the influences of jazz and the choral harmony of Poulenc, and features an immensely lush, almost orchestral sound which the choir and Edwards exploited to the full. Michael Dungan

Ulster Orchestra/Thierry Fischer Waterfront Hall, Belfast

Mozart - Symphony No 41 Elgar - Cello Concerto Tchaikovsky - Suite from Swan Lake

Thierry Fischer's conducting of the Jupiter was recently the subject of an "open rehearsal" where members of the public could see the Ulster Orchestra at work, and this well-paced, scrupulously balanced and stylishly played performance had clearly been prepared meticulously, to the point of seeming somewhat circumspect in the second movement. One's only real reservation, however, arose in the course of the third movement, with the practice, once taboo but now fashionable, of inserting pauses between the minuet and trio sections, which in this case spoils one of Mozart's subtlest jokes, the perfect cadence which begins the trio section.

Peter Wispelwey brought to the Elgar the indispensable quality of personal identification with the music. From the rising scales near the start, reduced here to a ghostly murmur, the playing had a quality of inwardness which reached the heart of the work in a way more heart-on-sleeve performances cannot. The accompaniment from Fischer and the Ulster Orchestra was noble and sympathetic, attaining an elegiac grace in the third movement.

Tchaikovsky never made a suite from Swan Lake, and although the more-or-less standard selection played here features favourites such as the Waltz and the Dance of the Cygnets it ignores some of the finest moments in favour of nationalistic genre dances. The heavier orchestration made one aware of the limitations of the Waterfront Hall acoustics, but it was worth this just for guest leader Ania Safonova's playing of the violin solo in the "Pas de deux".  Dermot Gault