Irish Times writers review a recital at the Hugo Wolf Festival and a concert given by the Carl Rosa opera company at the Grand Opera House, Belfast.
Colette McGahon (mezzo-soprano), Philip O'Reilly (bass),
Hugh Tinney (piano)
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
The fourth recital in the Dublin Hugo Wolf Festival reached a high point of excellence. Hugh Tinney at the piano was superb, playing the often very difficult music with consummate mastery, attentive to all the composer's demands, sensitively varying speeds and dynamics so that what is on the page a succession of notes ranked bar after bar became something organic with a life of its own, independent and yet adapting itself, with the utmost naturalness, to the needs of the texts - 22 songs from the Spanish Songbook, some sacred but mostly secular - sung with a dramatic intensity all the more remarkable for never straying into the region of the operatic.
Whether the singer were a man (Philip O'Reilly) or a woman (Colette McGahon), each brought to their individual songs a fluent melodic line and a deft characterisation that gave ample expression to the many moods of the texts which ranged from the devout to the ironic, from the passionate to the philandering, from the serious to the comic - happiness and anguish often appearing in the same song.
In Wolf's songs, text and music seem to have sprung, simultaneously, from one mind; in this recital voice and piano were equally at one in a dazzling demonstration of togetherness.
Douglas Sealy
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Carl Rosa Company
Grand Opera House, Belfast
Sullivan - HMS Pinafore
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company (performing Gilbert and Sullivan) and the Carl Rosa Opera Company (performing everyone else) toured Britain and Ireland for many years. This new company has adopted the name of the latter and the function of the former.
The company's artistic director, Peter Mulloy, has identified "traditional style productions" as its niche. On the positive side, this means providing an orchestra, which played stylishly and unobtrusively for David Russell Hulme, good late-Victorian costumes, and a production which doesn't try to be clever at the expense of the composer and librettist.
Timothy West's direction was however too restrained; Dick Deadeye (Peter Grant) emerged as the ship's intellectual, complete with book, beard and glasses, but the part is meant to caricature melodramatic villains and loses its point if played naturalistically. David Stephenson's crusty but insecure Corcoran on the other hand worked, partly because it was done with conviction and partly because the approach suits this part.
Colin Baker's Sir Joseph was perhaps too good-humoured, but he understands that the character must be rather larger than life and he provided a much-needed injection of personality.
The programme provided a synopsis, mission statements, and biographies of Carl Rosa, Colin Baker and Timothy West, but there were no details of the other performers and one wonders just how much vocal training certain members of the cast might have had. Anne Bourne (Josephine) does have a pleasant voice, but the all-important words of "The hours creep on apace" were not always clearly projected.
Runs until Saturday at the Grand Opera House, Belfast and from November 11th to 15th at the Cork Opera House
Dermot Gault
