Talent-spotting is not the least of the pleasures to be had from concerts such as those given by pupils from the DIT Conservatory on Friday and Saturday. Four young singers, strongly supported by the pianist Deborah Kelleher and deftly directed by Vic Merriman, performed excerpts from Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte as well as two short works: Mozart's youthful Bastien Und Bastienne and A Hand Of Bridge, Samuel Barber's mini opera.
The latter, composed in 1955 to a libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, concerns a card game during which three of the players soliloquise on matters of sex and personal ambition while the fourth, the mezzo, thinks only of buying a hat. It was interesting to note how much better the young performers coped with this mid- 20th-century music, and with Mozart's mature opera, than they did with the same composer's less sophisticated piece.
The soprano Margaret Collins, a sparkling performer with an expressive face, was vocally more relaxed as the soubrette Despina than as an overly uptight Bastienne. She was a properly bitchy Geraldine in the Barber opera and delivered a steady high line in the trio from Cos∞ Fan Tutte. Marcella Robinson contributed a solid alto line to that Cos∞ trio, but she was unsteady on sustained notes in the Dorabella/Guglielmo duet. As the "Chat" lady, she delighted with her clear delivery of the comic lines.
Eamonn Mulhall is a young singer to keep an ear open for. He's somewhat stiff on stage, but his sweet lyric tenor is expressive throughout a wide and even range. The most accomplished performances came from Owen Lynch, a warm-toned baritone with a confident stage presence. He was splendid in the Mozart works and outstanding in card-player David's aria of frustration.
