Belfast Zoo Tonight 6pm, Tomorrow 2.30pm/6pm, Sun 2.30pm, Fri Aug 17 6pm, Sat Aug 18 2.30pm/6pm, Sun Aug 19 2.30pm £12 048-90776277 niopera.comKILKENNY ARTS FESTIVAL Various venues, Kilkenny Until Aug 19 kilkennyarts.ie
Where better to stage Britten’s 1957 community opera, Noye’s Fludde, based on a Chester miracle play, than in a zoo, where you don’t have to pretend that Noah and his family are surrounded by animals? That’s what NI Opera is doing this weekend and next with eight performances in Belfast Zoo.
The Noye is Paul Carey Jones, with Doreen Curran as Mrs Noye. The director is Oliver Mears, the designs (right) are by Simon Holdsworth and the conductor is Nicholas Chalmers. The production, which is supported by the KT Wong Foundation, will tour to Beijing in October.
Kilkenny Arts Festival plays to its historic strengths in the area of early music. Basel- based ensemble La Morra perform Spanish Songs of the Early Renaissance on Monday. There’s a crossing of centuries and continents on Tuesday, when musicians from India (singer Bombay Jayashri and tabla player Sai Shravanam) meet up with early music players from Finland (Eero Palviainen, lute, with Markku Luolajan-Mikkola and Mikko Perkola, violas da gamba) for a programme that includes works by Marais, Couperin and Jenkins as well as a new song cycle, Sab Kahân, by Eero Hämeenniemi, that brings all the musicians together. And John O’Brien’s production of Purcell’s
Dido and Aeneas gets two performances on Wednesday and Thursday.
There’s also a chamber music programme on Tuesday (Ilya Gringolts, Nathan Braude, Torleif Thedéen and Polina Leschenko playing Chopin, Haydn, Ravel and Fauré), and, before that, on Saturday, a recital by Joonho Park (winner of the 2011 Dublin International Organ Competition), and a varied programme, Soundworlds, from the Irish Youth Choir under Greg Beardsell.
