Spotlight on opera

THE Opera Development Committee announced last month by the Arts Council has had its first meeting, writes Michael Dervan. It is being chaired by Council member Laura Magahy, and has defined its task as being to examine existing provision for opera in Ireland and to make recommendations for its development. A good place to start might be to re assess the level of this year's Arts Council grants to major opera companies. While the committee goes about its business, grants have been "maintained" at last year's levels, i.e., frozen, creating effective cuts in real terms, when inflation is taken into account. And the 1996 outlook is not good as the Council is budgeting for only a nine per cent increase in opera spending in a year when its overall funding has risen by 13 per cent.

The committee's review comes at a delicate time for DGOS Opera Ireland, which recently agreed the parting of the ways with its artistic director, Dorothea Glatt. Dr Glatt plans to use a seriously reduced orchestration of Puccini's Tosca in the company's forthcoming spring season, a proposal which is already meeting resistance from players in the RTECO.

In June, from Sunday 23rd to Saturday 29th, West Cork will see a major new music festival centred around the RTE Vanbrugh String Quartet (a tremendously exciting project which the Arts Council has responded to with a miserly grant of just £1,000. The festival, which will be based in Bantry House, runs to 14 concerts (roughly comparable in size to the classical programme of Kilkenny Arts Week) and will be unique in Ireland in a number of respects. The West Cork Chamber Music Festival has been planned on the basis of what you might call performers in residence. This will allow the core group of musicians - pianists Philippe Cassard and Barry Douglas, violinist Anthony Marwood, cellist Robert Cohen, clarinettist Romain Guyot, soprano Veronique Dietschy and the Parisii Quartet (joined in midweek by Irish flautist William Dowdall and harpist Andreja Malir) to mix genres and groupings by sharing individual programmes.

The opening concert gives an idea of what's involved - Debussy's String Quartet (by the Vanbrughs) and Ariette Oubliees (Dietschy/Cassard) will be followed by the Franck Piano Quintet (Cassard/Parisii). The closing concert follows the Chausson Concert for piano, violin and string quartet (Douglas/Marwood/Parisii) with Schubert's sublime String Quintet (Cohen/Vanbrugh).

Festival director Francis Humphrys has also secured the participation of leading poets. Seamus Heaney will read his Squarings "inside" a performance of Bach's Sixth Cello Suite, and Michael Hartnett will read his Mountains fall on us in the related context of Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, one of the composer's most remarkable string quartets.