Reviews

Irish Timesreviewers look at what's been happening in the world of arts

The Creation of the World, Lambert Puppet Theatre, Dublin

The annual International Puppet Festival Ireland opened its doors at the weekend with a performance by Portugal's Centro Dramatico de Evora. Like so much of puppetry, the company is rooted in the past, with a 200-year history of travelling around small towns and fairs with its productions. For the last 25 years, a group of its actors have revived this traditional show.

In bringing it to Ireland, the company edited the work substantially, and this version consisted of a number of scenes that only partly addressed its titular subject. We got a ballet of angels, a manifestation of sun and moon, a brush with Cain and Abel, a look at the Garden of Eden, and glimpses of a red-garbed God who jumped up and down a lot. The chronology was somewhat erratic, but all in fun.

The second half, as offered, had nothing to do with the Bible. A man and four women literally had a ball, whirling around like demented participants in an Iberian version of The Walls of Limerick. The music, created by a solo player on a 16-string guitar, was infectious, as were the cavortings generally.

The small stage, set well back, was rather dimly lit, a limitation. A puppet narrator engaged the audience in Portuguese comic badinage, and the episodic hour-long entertainment, clearly a very selective mining of the full show, was replete with good-humoured energy.

The Creation of the Worldhas finished, but the International Puppet Festival Ireland continues at venues around Dublin until this Sunday, Sept 16. For further information, go to www.puppetfestival.ie (box office: 01-2080974) Gerry Colgan

Jane Dutton, RTÉ NSO/Markson NCH, Dublin

Weber - Euryanthe Overture. Wagner - Wesendonk Lieder. Berlioz - Symphonie fantastique.

There are no big themes or grand surveys in the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's new subscription season, which opened at the National Concert Hall. Attention to this year's anniversaries of Grieg, Sibelius and Elgar remains minimal, and no non-anniversary highlighting is taking place.

General manager Brian O'Rourke's introduction in the season brochure mentions "many of the faces of German romanticism". Principal conductor Gerhard Markson asks "what is romantic music?" and answers: "It is emotional, very personal, it tells us about the dreams, anxieties and sufferings of the composer. And it always sounds 'beautiful'."

It's the absence of romantic music, of course, that would be really remarkable, rather than its presence.

The opening programme displayed two early facets of romanticism in music, one from Germany, the overture to Weber's opera Euryanthe, one from France, the Symphonie fantastiqueof Berlioz, a high watermark of atmosphere and pictorialism in music. Between them came the song-cycle Wagner wrote to poems by Mathilde Wesendonk when he was pursuing a relationship with her, including, appropriately, two songs that served as studies for Tristan und Isolde.

There was something too measured and matter-of-fact about Gerhard Markson's approach to yield the kind of atmosphere needed for Weber's Euryanthe Overture. He was far more responsive to the sound-world of Wagner's Wesendonk Lieder, where, sadly, the appealing full tone and vocal strength of US mezzo soprano Jane Dutton were undermined by the heaviness of her vibrato and the musical corner-cutting of that style of operatic delivery which is meant by the description "Wagnerian".

The last time the NSO tackled the Symphonie fantastiquethe conductor, Giordano Bellincampi, got the heady mixture just right. That performance took place in 2005, and it made a huge impression. By comparison, Markson was like a man ticking check-boxes, making sure that the "i"s were dotted, and the "t"s were crossed.

Even then, he sometimes made serious errors, spoiling the effect of the Scéne aux champs with an offstage oboe that sounded far, far too faint from where I was sitting, towards the back of the stalls.

The performance gained in impact during the high-jinks of the closing two movements, where the excitement of loud playing and clever scoring never fails to work its magic. Michael Dervan

Beltran, O'Sullivan, RTÉCO, NCH, Dublin

Whatever this opera gala was originally intended to be, the death of Luciano Pavarotti turned it into something else. It opened with a minute's silence dedicated to his memory and closed with encores - Nessun dormaand O Sole mio- associated with the great Italian tenor.

In between, the fact that the spotlight was on a tenor - Chilean Tito Beltran - meant that the whole programme took on the feel of a tribute. Beltran, with a powerful delivery and clean, piercing high notes (these showcased in each of his first-half items), eventually delivered his first really emotionally charged performance after making a brief but touching personal tribute to Pavarotti. This was in Cavaradossi's bitter-sweet reminiscing in E lucevan le stellefrom Puccini's Tosca,with Beltran never over-indulging but tapping into a special spirit abroad in the hall.

Cara O'Sullivan brought a different, charismatic appeal as the perfect foil to all the impassioned theatricality of the tenor repertoire. Her warm soprano is fresh-voiced and of a seemingly effortless agility, and she brought a youthful animation to her solos, including Je veux vivrefrom Gounod's Roméo et Julietteand O mio babbino carofrom Puccini's Gianni Schicchi.

Gala concert conditions are not ideal for producing chemistry. Yet the two conjured a connection in the sequence, from Act I of Puccini's La bohème, where Rodolfo and Mimi meet and fall in love. It was the final item, calculated to bring the house down, which it did.

Principal conductor David Brophy directed the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in balanced, sympathetic accompaniment throughout, also adding tightly wrought and atmospheric accounts of instrumental items such as the overture from Verdi's La forza del destinoand the Prelude to Bizet's Carmen. Michael Dungan