Reviews

Music:Opera Ireland chose wisely in selecting Donizetti's 64th opera, Don Pasquale , for its current season, writes Michael Dervan.

The company has been forced out of the Gaiety Theatre due to refurbishment and is presenting its productions within the constraints of the concert hall of the Royal Dublin Society.

Don Pasquale has a cast of five, the use of the chorus is light, and there are no extravagant demands of staging.But the company did not choose wisely in selecting its singers.

The amorous wiles of Don Pasquale demand performers who have a sense of style that's precise, timing that's impeccable in terms of both music and comedy, and voices to make light of writing that's intended to bubble with high spirits and touch the heartstrings with delicate sentiment.

Opera Ireland's team simply didn't live up to these requirements.

Marcel Vanaud's Don Pasquale came closer to the mark than most, but often defaulted into a kind of earthbound heaviness. Silvia Colombini gave a high-spirited performance as Norina, and she had the high notes she required. But she also had one of those vibratos which consistently threaten an instability which never actually arrives.

Jed Perry's thin-toned Ernesto seemed ineffectual and was at times unpleasant on the ear. Enrico Marrucci's Malatesta was business-like dull, and Martin Higgins's notary was played in over-the-top, panto mode.

Dieter Kaegi's production was so threadbare of ideas that one of the best laughs came from having a document passed through the orchestra, and Bruno Schwengl's modern-day designs scored their best moment with a display of designer-name emblazoned boxes to represent Norina's profligacy.

The strongest singing of the evening came from the voices of the National Chamber Choir in the chorus.

The awkward rubato in conductor Gianluca Martinenghi's handling of the overture did not bode well for what was to come, although, happily, there were moments when he managed to aerate the playing of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra with suitable lightness.

Opera Ireland likes to present a picture of being a company on the up and up. Anyone who can remember back 20 years to their 1987 Don Pasquale, with Nuccia Focile and Enrico Fissore, and David Parry in the pit, will find that hard to believe.

Donizetti - Don Pasquale, Opera Ireland, RDS, Dublin

Mahler - Symphony No 8 (Symphony of a Thousand)

The culmination of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's current season was a performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony at the National Basketball Arena on Saturday.

This so-called Symphony of a Thousand (the nickname coming from an early promotional slogan exaggerating the number of performers required) has had four performances in Ireland in the last two decades.

The first pair were given at The Point in Dublin in 1992, when grotesquely intrusive but ultimately ineffectual amplification resulted in wholly unacceptable levels of sonic and musical distortion.

Two performances in Belfast in 2000 offered the first opportunity for an Irish audience to experience this iconic work in the flesh in a way that faithfully communicated its full sonic splendour. Saturday's performance under Gerhard Markson came somewhere in between.

The National Basketball Arena, with its sharply-angled ceiling, provided an acoustic that was at its best in serving the mass of choral singers.

The performance brought together the voices of the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir, Tallaght Choral Society, Our Lady's Choral Society, Dún Laoghaire Choral Society, the Guinness Choir, RTÉ Cór na nÓg and the Lassus Scholars.

The combined choirs sounded at their best at either extreme, in the full-voiced climaxes, and at the moments of quietest murmur; the children's voices, happily, managed to score consistently.

The orchestral playing was altogether patchier in communication, as if both players and conductor were having difficulty in hearing exactly what was going on.

The moments of greatest spectacle, especially the use of the off-stage brass, were highly thrilling.

The chamber-music-like start to the second movement, however, failed to tell.

The large team of vocal soloists seemed to be having an even more difficult time than the instrumentalists, the venue offering them little or no acoustic support. The main female voices (Franzita Whelan, Mairéad Buicke, Ann Murray and Jean Rigby) carried less effortfully than those of the men (Alan Woodrow, Ashley Holland and Frode Olsen), although the Mater Gloriosa of Rebecca Ryan, placed up high on the left hand side, was far too disembodied from where I was sitting.

In short, this was an extremely patchy performance of a work that's unlikely to be given an adequate airing in Dublin until a more suitable venue is identified or built.

Michael Dervan

RTÉ NSO/Markson, National Basketball Arena, Dublin

Battles

It's not often a band has a sound so unique it essentially has a genre all to itself, but then bands like Battles don't come around very often.

Sure, bands that eschew 4x4 beats for deliberately atypical time metres have been described as math rockers for quite a while now, but no group has honed such rhythmic complexity quite as distinctly as Battles. And while the phrase "math-rock" might sound like it was designed to make nebbishes feel creative, this quartet make the most skull-crushingly loud racket this side of Mogwai. But largely without the quiet bits. A kind of avant-rock super-group, Battles consists of Tyondai Braxton, son of jazz musician Anthony Braxton; Dave Konopka, formerly of Lynx; Ian Williams, once the guitarist in math-rock pioneers Don Caballero; and John Stanier, the ferocious drummer from the heavy metal band it wasn't embarrassing to like, Helmet.

Their debut album proper, Mirrors, has just landed, and the rave reviews suggest there is always going to be room for discordant avant-rock that secretly contains great tunes.

When they launch into their set, the sheer power of their sound becomes forcefully apparent. Stanier's drums are punishing, driving the sound forwards with every thunderous smash of the highest cymbal in rock. Williams and Braxton simultaneously throttle their guitars and fiddle with their decks, looping and layering samples into squalls of sound, while Braxton adds some distorted vocals through an impressively shredded mic.

It would be almost too much to expect that level of intensity to be maintained throughout the 80-minute set, and eventually the aural assault begins to lose its edge, the songs meandering rather too far. But for all that Battles offer a thrilling live performance. Happily, they're returning to Dublin in August.

Davin O'Dwyer

Temple Bar Music Centre, Dublin