REVIEWS

Irish Times reviewers take in punk rock, hip hop and opera.

Opera Gala

National Concert Hall

Cara O'Sullivan and Tito Beltran have been regular contributors to Barra O'Tuama concerts over the years. At the NCH on Saturday, both were in good vocal condition, and delivered a programme of mainly popular fare with great aplomb.

As ever, the Cork soprano exploited her skill at negotiating rapid passages in full voice. She was particularly spectacular in Rosina's aria from Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, a mezzo-soprano piece whose range she extended with oodles of high-flying embellishments.

She continued to sparkle in coloratura showpieces from Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Verdi's vespri siciliani and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.

In duets from La traviata and Lucia di Lammermoor she and Beltran were well matched, although the Donizetti excerpt was sung rather too loudly for music of its period.

Indeed, the programme was one that didn't allow for much in the way of tonal shading.

The Chilean tenor is blessed with a vibrancy that extends all the way to the top of his range. Under pressure, and there was a lot of that in his ardent handling of the material, he sometimes sharpened. Nevertheless, his focused singing of arias by Donizetti and Puccini, as well as a lyrical rendering of Manrico's off-stage serenade from Il trovatore, gave much pleasure.

Laurent Wagner and the RTÉCO supported the singers firmly, if rather loudly, and the conductor added an extra dimension by vocalising the Act 1 aria from Tosca.

John Allen

The Buzzcocks

The Village, Dublin

In the same way that committed Kamikaze pilots never thought too carefully about the advantages of a pension plan, punk music never really anticipated getting old. "No future," sneered Johnny Rotten in 1977, punk's year zero.

Today, the property dealer, BBC presenter and I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here contestant realises that the future had other plans. Time has been far kinder to his punk contemporaries The Buzzcocks.

Taking to the stage with as much hustle and vigour as their music, the founding members of Manchester's pop punks may have acquired a little ballast in middle age, but they've lost none of their steel. True, they arrive to the clipped recordings of a self-service checkout - "please insert payment" - and their opener, Flat-Pack Philosophy, has unusually adult concerns about contemporary society. Its self-assembly indictment slots each scathing component together neatly, but a three-minute argument will always be missing some connecting bolts.

The ensuing Wish I Never Loved You, also new, is more convincing, partly because The Buzzcocks have always known how to set the adolescent yowl of a lovelorn teenager to punchy harmonies and breakneck guitars. What Do I Get? makes the case best: everyone grows up but there are some things you never grow out of.

Admirable as The Buzzcocks are for refusing to compromise, for repulsing any semblance of stylistic development, this kind of investment in punk can yield diminishing returns. New material shuffles discretely into old favourites like Friends of Mine and Fiction Romance. But with 24 songs, even three-minute punk begins to feel stodgy.

Their biggest hit, Ever Fallen in Love, is saved for the encore, but it's Autonomy's shiver of mortality that lingers longest. Steve Diggle introduces it as Joe Strummer's favourite Buzzcock's song, before Pete Shelley sneers facetiously: "Yeah but he's dead!"

You may laugh, Pete, but the future catches up.

Peter Crawley

Ugly Duckling

CrawDaddy, Dublin

Ali Bracken

UD don't take themselves too seriously. Spawned on Long Beach, their sense of humour stems from the fact that they're three white boys from the spot that Snoop put on the map. They emerged in the early 90s with a style starkly contrasting the saturated Californian gangsta rap scene and their name is a metaphor for what they represented musically when they came out - outcasts.

"We're straight-up broke, so we need y'all to buy our T-shirts," Andy C jokes after the gig. "We need y'all to spend all your money on us cause we've gotta eat. Just think of it as charity," he says with a smile.

It's a familiar bluster from UD who have made their name through spot-on satirical portrayal of the falseness of mainstream hip-hop. Their regular skits on the cliched gangster rap lifestyle are executed without falling into the banality of blatant insults and their witticism is impossible not to smirk at.

To see them parade around stage sporting gold chains and imitating with uncanny precision mainstream rap artists is a highlight of their live show and got the crowd hyped.

UD are from the creed of old school, placing equal emphasis on turntablism and rhyming.

DJ Young Einstein, with his supreme scratching skills, is the backbone of the group, while Andy C and Dizzy D control the vocals. They think hip-hop should be about having fun, not pimping and posturing.

"This one goes out to y'all rockin' that gangsta pop ringtone rap," sings Dizzy D. "Watch out, you might get smacked."

Peter Crawley