Irish Times reviewers listen to performances from the RTECO in the NCH, Ensemble L'Aia at the East Cork Early Music Festival and Tony Robinson's one-man show in Dublin.
O'Sullivan/Molloy, RTÉCO/Wagner. NCH, Dublin
Golden Melodies from Opera and Operetta may sound like an innocent enough title for a gala concert, yet the melodies were of many hues, and took in just about everything from opera buffa to Broadway.
Straddling the genres with varying degrees of success was the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under its principal conductor Laurent Wagner, rising Irish bass-baritone John Molloy, and eminent Irish soprano Cara O'Sullivan.
Wagner secured playing that was punctilious without being straitjacketed. But a martial quality outshone the melody-making in Verdi's Sicilian Vespers Overture, while Johann Strauss II's Gypsy Baron Overture and Richard Rodgers's Carousel Waltz wanted a certain Viennese grace.
In two classical arias (La calunnia from Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Non più andrai from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro), Molloy showed a developing sense of theatrical voicecraft that's still losing its self-consciousness.
At the opposite end of the musical spectrum, his account of The Impossible Dream from The Man of La Mancha was altogether less promising. It was in the middle-ground of Sullivan's Policeman's Song, Kern's Ol' Man River and Gershwin's I Got Plenty o' Nothin' that Molloy's style of delivery and still ripening voice seemed to find their element.
The eclectic programme placed no obstacles in the way of O'Sullivan, who swept from Bellini (Casta diva from Norma) through Gilbert and Sullivan (Poor Wandering One from The Pirates of Penzance) to Rodgers and Hammerstein (You'll Never Walk Alone from Carousel) with a flair that knows no stylistic frontiers.
Though the odd touch of dryness may have been just perceptible, her voice was as fabulously connected and forcibly commanding as ever.
And it was in Sempre libera from Verdi's La Traviata that she deployed it to the evening's best advantage. - Andrew Johnstone
Tony Robinson, Olympia Theatre, Dublin
For all the work he has done, Tony Robinson knows that he's still remembered for being the "stupidest, smelliest, most incompetent little git in the history of human evolution", the Baldrick character in Blackadder. Bringing his one-man show to the Olympia Theatre, he talked about the nature of stereotyping and being known as "the guy who now presents the archaeology show" in an entertaining theatrical romp.
With a surprisingly animated stage presence, his show is a reflection on his 40 odd years in show business and while he is by no means a natural comedian, he does manage to imbue his stories with a sense of verve and punch.
A lot of this type of theatrical reminiscence can by of the mawky variety, but Robinson has worked with people such as Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Ben Elton, and while he doesn't address them directly, his stories are well presented and delivered with a keen sense of timing.
What really helped the show along was that he was able to show video moments of his TV appearances - ranging from some hilarious footage of him as a child actor in a dental awareness campaign to out-takes from his Time Team programme.
Bravely, he gave over the entire second half of the show to a question-and-answer session. He answered questions about his politics (he was once a prospective British Labour Party MP); his favourite worst-ever job (he once presented a TV show called The World's Worst Job) and displayed good improvisation skills in his answers.
While not all his stories work, there was a beautiful description of the background to the filming of the famous last Blackadder Goes Forth episode.
An enjoyable show, but I'm really not sure about the encore - which was an attempt to lead the audience in a singalong to Any Old Iron. - Brian Boyd
Ensemble L'Aia. East Cork Early Music Festival
Thursday's programme was given by Ensemble L'Aia at Fota House and explored the festival theme of crossing borders. The actual membership of the group itself crosses plenty of borders.
Noémi Kiss is a soprano from Hungary, Ian Wilson a recorder-player from the UK, Tuomo Suni a violinist from Finland, Nicholas Milne a viol-player from Ireland, and Haru Kitamika a harpsichord-player from Japan. And the ensemble is based in the Netherlands.
The declared theme of the evening's music was rather narrower - Germany and France - but the mix was actually wider than that might suggest.
Handel was represented by an Italian cantata (Languia di bocca lusinghiera), and space was found for an English-language cantata, When love's soft passion, by another German émigré, Johann Christoph Pepusch (1667-1752).
Pepusch spent most of his life in London, and his work now languishes in the giant shadow cast there by Handel's achievements. Pepusch's hand in The Beggar's Opera may have overshadowed his other work, but the cantata suggested a composer worth paying more attention to. Sonatas by Handel and Telemann completed the evening's purely German strand.
The first half of the programme was given over to the French baroque, two cantatas by Michel Pignolet de Montéclair (Ariane et Bacchus and Le Mort de Didon) and pieces by Marin Marais.
Noémi Kiss has a pleasing tone and an easy manner, though her fast vibrato perhaps a bit too consistent in its use. The limitation in her performances was in the handling of the texts. She never quite allowed the words to escape from the constraints of the musical line and have an import of their own.
The vocal lines were attractive in sound, but never quite grounded in the specifics of the texts. Even with all their leant-on dissonances, the French cantatas sounded rarefied and sometimes expressively wan in these performances.
The instrumentalists made a more definite impression. Kitamika may have been more a follower than a leader at the harpsichord, but Milne was always assertive on the bass line.
Suni's intonation became pinched at times in the upper register, but he often provided a perfect foil for Wilson's recorder-playing, which, with its probing expressive manner, seemed on Thursday to be the real backbone of the group. - Michael Dervan
• The East Cork Early Music Festival continues until tomorrow
