Idomeneo - Mozart
Mozart's operas have not always been generously served by Irish opera companies. Opera Northern Ireland has been the most bounteous, running a four-year Mozart series which peaked in the bicentenary year of 1991, and returning regularly to the composer since then. However, the company is wrong to claim its new Idomeneo, directed by Harry Silverstein and designed by Linda Buchanan, as an Irish premiere. The work was presented as long ago as 1956 by the Dublin Grand Opera Society.
The general commonsensicality of Saturday's Idomeneo came as something of a relief after the misguided Aida of the previous night. The set of tilted towers and sloping paths gave a variety of levels and provided routes for ritualised movement within a predominantly static presentation.
The singing was mixed. Both Emma Selway's Idamante and Louise Walsh's Ilia failed to find true Mozartian focus and sharpness of rhythm, and their recitative (there's a lot of it in this opera) didn't always convincingly carry the meaning and emotional tenor of the words.
Both Christopher Gillett's Arbace and Mark le Brocq's Idomeneo proved more specific in what they communicated, though their success was greater in Act I than later in the opera. Best of all, though, was the Elettra of Virginia Kerr, especially in Act II, where the prospect of her journey with Idamante brought a stylish expression of joy - contained rather than overflowing, but touching, nevertheless.
The members of the chorus were imported from the Choir of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Though sometimes gauche of movement, they sang with youthful freshness and enthusiasm and also with an accuracy that hasn't been heard in an ONI production before. Company artistic director, Stephen Barlow, conducted the Ulster Orchestra with more efficiency than insight though, happily, from time to time he was sparked into vital depiction of the richness with which Mozart imbued an opera for which he always retained a special affection.
