A round-up of reviews from the arts world
The Bohemian Girl Castleward Opera
With The Bohemian Girl, Irish composer Michael Balfe scored one of the 19th century's most popular operatic hits. Despite the endurance of two or three numbers, it is seldom heard in its entirety nowadays, and was last staged in Northern Ireland by Studio Opera Group in 1978. But a concert performance by RTÉ groups was recorded in 1991, and there are plans for a production at the RDS in 2008. Whereas Victorian impresarios could doubtless transport their fervent audiences to the opera's romantic central European locations by means of elaborate staging, this would be impossible in Castleward's tiny theatre.
Instead, director Karl Wallace deftly converts the tale of abduction by a gypsy band into a folk narrative that's re-enacted around a campfire by the gypsies themselves - a neat theatrical ruse aptly symbolised by fragments of giant red cartwheels framing the two-tiered stage.
Sadly, however, that's about as far as the charm goes. The plot is daft and erratically paced, the libretto banal and stiff, and there's a curious, angular unpredictability to much of the melody.
Although the locally recruited cast and chorus have their work cut out to give this jaded piece the fillip it desperately needs, the celebrated ballads make for momentary high points.
As the hero Thaddeus, tenor David Revels sings a poised Then You'll Remember Me; as Count Arnheim, baritone Michael Brown touches with The Heart Bowed Down by Weight of Woe. And although the Gypsy Queen's part contains nothing memorable, contralto Jenny Bourke nicely develops its dramatic potential. But most impressive by far, as the heroine Arline, is soprano Lynda Barrett, whose agile voice and sure stage sense mark her out for greater challenges than I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls. Runs until June 22. Andrew Johnstone
Olivier Ker Ourio at the Alliance Française, Dublin
Jazz harmonica players, while not an endangered species, are rare enough to be noteworthy, particularly when they're as accomplished as Olivier Ker Ourio, who played his first concert here last week. Born in Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean but now a long-time Parisian, he shows some influence of the great Belgian harmonica player, Toots Thielemans, especially in the tonal qualities he draws from the instrument. But his lines and harmonic sense are different from the Belgian maestro's, and his time sense is his own.
He was backed by two of our best local musicians in the equally capable Tommy Halferty (guitar) and Michael Coady (bass). It was, however, a big ask to expect all three players, with so little rehearsal time, to gel completely.
Moreover, Ourio's sense of time - rooted, presumably, in the experiences of his birthplace - was clearly different from those of Halferty and Coady, both of whose roots would be, to a degree, in bop, although they have shown a willingness to explore other, more contemporary, idioms. As a result, much of the first set was tentative, particularly on Dave Brubeck's charming In Your Own Sweet Way, as the players felt their way into some kind of mutual accommodation.
There were signs of that coming on Wayne Shorter's salute to the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, a blues-based piece on which the trio began to develop something of a groove. And Coady opened the solo sequence on the ballad, Darn That Dream, with a fine outing on bass, while they finished the set with an enjoyable Sous le Ciel de Paris, with excellent guitar and harmonica solos.
The second set was better, although the different conceptions of time were clear on an old bop piece, Wee, where a guitar-harmonica chase showed Halferty more at home in the idiom than Ourio. But there were good moments to follow, notably on Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, with an excellent bass solo, a superb harmonica re-entry and a haunting coda, and (perhaps the best of the evening) Alone Together done as a brisk waltz. That was followed by a fine duet for harmonica and guitar on Django Reinhardt's Manoir de mes Rêves, and a lively blues, The Turnaround. Overall, it was a pleasant evening, if a somewhat underwhelming one. Ray Comiskey
Zappa Plays Zappa at Vicar Street, Dublin
There were, you may have already guessed, lots of long guitar solos and instrumental freakouts, some of which were quite skittish, others of which gave new meaning to the words "interminable" and "insufferable". And yet, through it all, there was the notion that Frank Zappa was looking down from on high, stroking his under-lip tuft of hair and nodding in approval at this honourable attempt at bringing his music to a few small pockets of the masses.
Zappa died in 1993 (in his early 50s) of prostate cancer. He had become something of a totemic figure, not just for the intellectually inclined but also for the committed experimentalist. His journey from the mid-1960s (as the long-haired, bearded counter-culturalist who abhorred drug-taking and despised hippie hypocrisy) to the 1990s (when he was appointed Czechoslovakia's cultural liaison officer and announced that he would be standing as an independent candidate in the 1992 US presidential election) was bridged by a searing intelligence that had no problem grappling with serious political and social issues. Music was an obvious bridge, too, as he mixed improvisational jazz with rock, cartoon scores with Edgar Varèse and Pierre Boulez, spoken word with complex/ intricate musical noodlings. In short, Zappa was a musical polymath - a genius to many of his fans, a curiosity to those who didn't "get" what he did.
Frank's son, Dweezil, has taken it upon himself to replicate his father's music, and while that in itself is admirable, the result is another thing altogether. Taken out of emotional context (loving son pays tribute to good father by faithfully reproducing father's music in the company of some of father's former bandmates), the music ranges from reasonably tuneful to deliberately atonal.
Mostly, however - irrespective of the original intellectual motivation, the contemporary classical influences and technically rigorous musicianship - it amounts to self-indulgence. An occasionally enjoyable exercise, then, but one best experienced, perhaps, in the more fragrant and heady 1960s. Tony Clayton-Lea
