RDS teases and tantalises: As the sun beat down outside Dublin's RDS on Tuesday this week, baritone Jamie Rock sang about time slipping away.
"In happy moments day by day, the sands of life may pass in swift but tranquil tide away from time's unerring glass," as the lyricist Edward Fitzball wrote to accompany the music of William Vincent Wallace in his 1845 ballad opera Maritana.
It will be performed in concert form later this month to celebrate the 275th birthday of the RDS.
The passionate music of Maritana, "will tease, torment and tantalise you," said singer and actor Bill Golding at a reception this week to announce details of the upcoming event. "It's a love story and it does have trials and tribulations, romance, passion, drama, lust, treachery and perfidy."
The opera was "hugely popular not only with audiences but with theatre managers, actors and singers", he said, explaining that it is always linked with The Lily of Killarney by Julius Benedict and The Bohemian Girl by Michael William Balfe, and that these three ballad operas are collectively called the Irish Ring trilogy.
Austin Mescall, president of the RDS, said the highlight of the birthday celebrations will be the performance, under the baton of conductor Proinnsías Ó Duinn, of Maritana this summer.
Dearbhla Collins, pianist and project consultant for the production, played the accompaniment to Rock when he sang, and to mezzosoprano Norah King, who sang Scenes that are Brightest and Golding who sang a few lines of There is a Flower that Bloometh.
Others present were Victor K Barry, vice-president of the Glasnevin Music Society, Michael Duffy, RDS chief executive officer; Anne Marie Stynes, RDS council and board member and chair of its music sub-committee and Alison Casey, council member of the RDS.
Maritana by William Vincent Wallace will be performed at the RDS Concert Hall on Sat, Jun 24 and Sun, Jun 25. Bookings: e-mail irishring@rds.ie, tel: 01-6680866
Party time for Galway's stone mad
What is the secret that makes Galwegians such great party throwers? "We're all stone mad - like the walls of Galway," said singer Mary Coughlan, who will take part in this year's Galway Arts Festival with a concert on Tuesday, July 18th in the city's Warwick Hotel. "The stone walls only start at Ballinasloe," she added mischievously.
According to Paul Fahy, the festival's artistic director: "Galway has always been a bohemian town and has a great welcome for everybody. It's never been insular."
The countdown began on Wednesday to this year's festival with the launch of its programme, graced by a painting on its cover by artist Éadaín Hunter. This year, the festival has a budget of more than €2 million, an expected audience of more than 120,000 visitors and an expanded visual arts programme, with 20 exhibitions, including a show of new work by artist Hughie O'Donoghue, called The Deep.
At a party in Dublin's Chester Beatty Library to announce its programme, Paul Fahy highlighted the festival's commitment to "showcase new work and provide a platform for work that wouldn't normally be seen outside of the festival".
This includes the world premiere of a new version by writer Vincent Woods of Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roi. Monica Frawley, will make her debut as the play's director and she will design it also. Actors Malcolm Adams and Janet Moran will star in this version of the play, which is to be called King Ubu.
Other contributors who came to the programme launch included playwright Garrett Keogh - who was there with his daughter, Lisa Tierney-Keogh - who will have a world premiere of Dog Show: Rex, and Mark Doherty, who will present a play for children with Mikel Murfi, called The Clerk and the Clown (also a world premiere).
Also present at the launch were actors Cathy Belton and Sean McGinley, choreographer David Bolger, Tania Banotti, chief executive of Theatre Forum, the association for theatre; Jim Culleton of Fishamble Theatre Company and Kerry's great footballer Páidí Ó Sé, now a director with Fáilte Ireland.
The Galway Arts Festival will run from Mon, Jul 17 to Sunday, Jul 30. For more details and booking visit www.galwayartsfestival.ie, tel: 091-566577
Playing away from home at the Gate
Infidelity is the theme of The Constant Wife by W Somerset Maugham. That's how Mary Harrington, a teacher at Scoil Íde Primary School in Raheny, Co Dublin, summed it up before going to the opening night's performance at the Gate Theatre on Tuesday night. Harrington, who retires this year after 41 years as a teacher, was there with her daughter Patsy Harrington.
According to the play's director, Alan Stanford, the play's underlying message is to "never trust a woman". He said, "Any woman would agree because every woman knows just how cleverly they can cope with situations presented to them by their errant husbands."
The play's costume designer, Peter O'Brien, took his niece, Kate O'Brien, to the gala opening night performance as a treat before she was to begin her Junior Cert exams the next day. Set in 1934, the stylish and lavish dresses include "lots of floating chiffon", he said. Also at the opening was poet Micheál O'Siadhail - who was there with his wife of 36 years, Bríd - whose last collection, Love Life, chronicles his love and the constancy of their life together.
The play's constant wife, who is played by Paris Jefferson, is a fine independent woman ("Is bean bhreá neamhspléach í"), according to Helen Ní Mhurchú, who was there with her husband, Prof Máirtín Ó Murchú. When she finds out that her husband "is playing away from home", she does likewise, said Ní Murchú. Her and Máirtín's daughter, Caitríona Ní Mhurchú, plays a business woman, Barbara Fawcett, in the play.
Others at the opening included artist Cian McLoughlin, the actors John Kavanagh and Johnny Murphy, the British ambassador, Stewart Eldon and his wife Chris, and Barney Whelan, head of corporate affairs at An Post, which this week issued four new stamps to mark significant contributions to the development of Irish language culture, including 10 years of TG4.
The Constant Wife continues at the Gate Theatre until Saturday, Aug 12
Who is Pixie Pirelli?
Some puzzled over the identity of Pixie Pirelli, the name on the cover of a new book, Hard to Choos, which was published this week by New Island.
The name was also on the invitation card to the book's launch party in Dublin on Wednesday night. Who had ever heard of this writer? Was she Italian, perhaps?
The answer came in a poem that writer and former actor Kate Thompson wrote and read to those gathered at the launch party in Hughes & Hughes bookshop in Dublin's St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre.
"Impish Pixie and I are both one and the same," declared Thompson, revealing that Pirelli is, in fact, a character in one of Thompson's earlier novels, Sex, Lies and Fairytales. "Bon voyage to my animus, Pixie Pirelli," she concluded.
The book was launched by writer Cathy Kelly, who is Unicef Ireland ambassador and currently topping best-seller lists with her book, Past Secrets. She announced that a special auction on Ebay of limited edition signed copies (signed by both persona) of Hard to Choos is to take place, with all proceeds going to Unicef's earthquake appeal.
Other writers, including Marian Keyes, Peter Sheridan, Catherine Daly, Fiona O'Brien, Philip Davison, Marita Conlon-McKenna and Suzanne Higgins were all at the launch. Actors who came along included Geraldine Plunkett, Susan Slott, Hilary Reynolds, Eunice McMenamin, Ruth Hegarty and Eileen Colgan. Malcolm Douglas, Thomspon's actor husband, was there too, with their daughter, Clara Douglas Thompson, who currently works in Hughes & Hughes. Photographer and Aosdána member Amelia Stein, violinist Zoe Conway and publisher Edwin Higel, were also at the party.
Hard to Choos by Pixie Pirelli, which is a Kate Thompson novel, is published by New Island