Reviews

Irish Timeswriters review A Tribute to Veronica Dunneand Triantán Trio, which were both at the NCH, and The Importance of Being Earnestat the Cork Arts Theatre.

A Tribute to Veronica Dunne - 80th Birthday Celebration Concert, NCH, Dublin

Veronica Dunne, universally known as Ronnie, is one of those individuals who has managed to become a legend in her own lifetime. In her operatic career in the 1950s she mingled at Covent Garden with the likes of Joan Sutherland and Kathleen Ferrier. And she turned to teaching at a time when her own singular achievements as an Irish singer in the world of opera seemed unlikely to be repeated, and set about training a generation of singers to follow in her footsteps.

Less well remembered, and unremarked at her 80th Birthday Celebration Concert on Thursday, is the fact that she did some service for new music, premiéring pieces by Brian Boydell, James Wilson and Seóirse Bodley, and performing Messiaen's extraordinary song-cycle Harawi with Havelock Nelson.

The achievements of the Wexford Festival, notwithstanding, and in spite of the glory days of the Dublin Grand Opera Society in the 1950s when Ronnie was in her prime, opera has long been marginalised by the arbiters of culture in Ireland. We're proud to have a great singer or two, to see some names in lights, and to have an internationally renowned festival with an eccentric repertoire policy. But, mostly, Ministers and their mandarins simply don't want to pay what opera costs. It's somehow seen as a part of European heritage that's not for us. And if that's true for opera itself, it's even more true for the training of singers.

Ronnie Dunne, and of course she wasn't the only one, dedicated herself to the uphill battle of identifying and motivating the talent to go out into the challenging world of opera and make good. Without her campaigning spirit there would be far fewer professional Irish singers. A wide selection of those singers who flourished under her tutelage were delighted to strut their stuff on Thursday in honour of the lady who inspired them.

The standout performance came from Miriam Murphy, who shared the top prize at Seattle Opera's International Wagner Competition last year. Her delivery of Vieni t'affretta! from Verdi's Macbeth offered the evening's most dramatic and rawly exciting singing.

It was good, also, to hear a firm and on-form Celine Byrne, the soprano who won the Maria Callas Grand Prix in Athens in March, and the mezzo soprano Tara Erraught (second prize at the Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition in January), a singer who seems to develop every time I hear her.

The evening was one where the immediate impact of vocal delivery took precedence over matters of musical style, and the purely lyrical often yielded to vocal drama.

At the end of the programme, the brave Orlando Chamber Orchestra and its conductor Ite O'Donovan were set aside, and the great lady herself gave a performance in different mode, with Jeannie Reddin at the piano. If there's been as extraordinary, as touching, as unusually detailed or as personally meaningful a performance of Danny Boy given in the National Concert Hall, I haven't heard it. - Michael Dervan

Triantán Trio, NCH, Dublin

Mendelssohn - Trio in C minor Op 66. Osborne - Trio No 3 in G Op 52.

Una Hunt, pianist of the Triantán Trio, is a determined sleuth of 19th-century Irish composers, and her quarry for this programme was George Alexander Osborne.

Born in Limerick in 1806, this autodidactic musician forged a career in Paris, where he was befriended by Berlioz, Chopin and Mendelssohn. In 1843, he settled in London, spending the last 50 years of his life there.

Berlioz waxed lyrical about Osborne's songs. "Nothing," he wrote, "excites my imagination more vividly and makes it fly more rapidly to the green hills of Ireland than those quaint virginal melodies." On the chamber music, he was less emotive, calling it "grand in construction and elevated in style".

There's certainly no lack of local colour in the Trio No 3 of 1846, where the tunes often recall Moore's famous melodies, and the dance-like figurations seem almost to anticipate the kind of folk-moods on which Grieg and Dvorák would later trade.

But there's a frustrating lack of question-and-answer logic to the phrasing, of contrapuntal tension to the thematic treatment. And Osborne's penchant for melodrama is just too strong for him entirely to rise above the sort of Hiberno-Victorian experience you get from Balfe.

The Triantán's playing was staunchly melodic, and delivered the brisker tempos without compromise. Though it avoided extremes, the dynamic range kept a good balance among all three instruments, particularly in Osborne's work - where the cello writing, it must be said, is more consistently tuneful than Mendelssohn's.

By all other comparisons, however, Osborne had a hard task of following his German colleague. The best wine had been served first. - Andrew Johnstone

The Importance of Being Earnest, Cork Arts Theatre

Wilde isn't easy. His comedies demand an attention audiences are often reluctant to give and performances that actors are often unable to command. In this Chattyboo Productions presentation of The Importance of Being Earnest, however, both requirements are satisfied by a company sharing an intelligent grasp of the challenge confronting them.

It is true that modern culture is not the sort of thing one talks about in private, but a well-made play which is also extremely funny can be a reminder of what the most recently contemporary culture is lacking: spirited comedy with an acid taint, delivered not just with an understanding of the material and its social content, but with a crafted joy.

The plot squeals with improbability as two wealthy young men about London rival one another on their romantic quests, commenting on life and their perception of it as they go. Director Tony Caniffe can't do much to ensure fluid movement on a small stage where the set, by Jim Newman, somehow manages to do all that is asked of it, but he has imposed a pattern of speech, costume and manner which provides both context and conviction.

From the moment Ian Queally's butler presents a salver to the aside in which Charlie Ruxton's butler blows dust off a book, a span of three acts, there isn't a quiver of doubt in any performance. Lady Bracknell, in imperial purple, does not outdo the legendary enunciation of, for example, Edith Evans; Aine O'Leary is too wise to make the attempt and instead creates a personage of her own, ridiculous and magnificent at once.

The girls are just downright gorgeous: Angela Newman as Gwendolyn Fairfax and Roisin Donovan as Cecily Cardew grounding all that froth and vivacity with assurance. Jim Queally as Canon Chasuble and Mary Caniffe as Miss Prism eschew caricature and achieve something close to sympathy.

With lines of such rare quality and demanding phrasing, some voices, O'Leary's in particular, can reveal their true tonal beauty. For others, the demand is almost too much and this is where the otherwise stalwart work of Ian McGuirk as Algernon and Frank Prendergast as John takes a tumble: their timing is accurate, but they either over-weight the sentences to make a point or hesitate so as to be sure to hit the target. They should relax and, like their colleagues, enjoy this play as it was meant to be enjoyed. - Mary Leland

Runs until August 11th