REVIEW

Reviews today looks at Opera 2005at the Cork Opera House

Opera 2005

Cork Opera House

Verdi - Un ballo in maschera.

Opera 2005 is a young company, now in its fourth year of full-scale productions at the Cork Opera House. That leaves it in the happy position of being able to chalk up a lot of firsts.

This week's new production of Un ballo in maschera, for instance, is the company's first venture into Verdi. And, as artistic director Kevin Mallon pointed out, Cara O'Sullivan's appearance as Amelia marked "her first major opera role in her home town".

O'Sullivan's approach is to convey the character with innocence and confusion. Amelia secretly loves the king, Gustavus, and her feelings are reciprocated. And, although the pair decide not to act on those feelings, it is their one nocturnal meeting that results in the assassination of the king, at the masked ball of the title.

O'Sullivan's is an effective and affecting assumption, the modesty of the characterisation carried out with a musical and vocal subtlety that doesn't deter her from the thrilling outbursts her situation provokes.

Her Gustavus, unfortunately, is a rather weak presence. Tenor Jeff Stewart has a nasal tone and his targeting of pitch is not always reliable. The ardency of baritone Simon Thorpe as Amelia's husband, Anckarstroem, is altogether more persuasive, and he also stirs up an impressive storm with his co-conspirators, Stefan Holmström's Count Ribbing and John Molloy's Count Horn.

Welsh mezzo soprano Ceri Williams is fabulously rich and fruity as the fortune-teller Mam'zelle Arvidson, and although the Newtownards soprano Rebekah Coffey occasionally makes too big a deal of things as the page, Oscar, she also has moments where she delivers the florid vocal line with the perfection of a mechanical bird.

Tom Hawkes's production, which updates the action to "a Scandinavian principality just before the outbreak of the first World War", is unassumingly effective, and Olan Wrynn's tall settings are imposing to the eye though sometimes restrictive of movement.

The Opera 2005 chorus sounds enthusiastic if at times a little raw, and the conducting of Kevin Mallon has an expressive alertness and adaptability that more than compensates for some of the rough edges in the orchestral playing.

With an Arts Council grant of €110,000, Opera 2005 functions on just a fraction of the per-performance public subsidy of Opera Ireland, the Wexford Festival Opera or Anna Livia Dublin International Opera Festival. It will be interesting to see how this helps it in the funding lottery that will follow this year's budget cutbacks. The current Ballo in mascherais an achievement that should give it an edge.

• At the Cork Opera House until Saturday; in Limerick on Tuesday 30th MICHAEL DERVAN