A look at what is happening in the world of the arts.
Fidelio
Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin
It's a rather obvious and attractive idea to stage Beethoven's sole opera in a jail. After all, it's in a jail that Beethoven's paean to the redemptive power of marital love is actually set.
What to do with the opera when you're actually staging it in a jail is a lot less clear. The effect of Annilese Miskimmon's new Opera Theatre Company (OTC) production, which opened in the never-failingly evocative surroundings of Kilmainham Gaol on Thursday (the evening's wild weather providing pathetic fallacy), followed on from some far-reaching primary decisions.
The performance was given in the round, the audience split between tiered benches on the ground floor and standing room in the galleries.
The reduced orchestra under Tecwyn Evans was placed towards the end of one of the side walls (a different one in each act), and the singers roved freely, up and down stairs, sometimes spaced so widely apart that failures of musical co-ordination were inevitable.
The building's echoey acoustics, which was going to be a problem at the best of times, ensured that, at any particular moment, a lot of the words were flying away from a lot of the listeners, never to be retrieved or deciphered. Only when you were close enough and could see a singer's eyes were the words guaranteed.
On the positive side, the acoustics did at times convey an orchestral weight and impact that were mightily impressive, though at others the use of single strings had a wholly predictable thinning effect.
Unusually for OTC, there was a full chorus, padded out with a bevy of actors, enabling Miskimmon to provide activity at all the cell-levels that were available to her. Paradoxically, however, the great moment of the emergence of the prisoners fared less well in the context of an actual prison than you would expect in the theatre.
On the opening night, the cast's delivery was uneven. Geoffrey Moses, as the jailer Rocco, pitched the character very well, but not his vocal line. Rebekah Coffey was all fresh-voiced enthusiasm as his daughter Marzelline, and Eamonn Mulhall was eagerly over-the-top as the enamoured Jacquino. Franzita Whelan's not-quite-convincingly male-disguised Leonore presented palpable discomfort in the face of Marzelline's unwelcome attentions, and soared with unerring sureness when she had secured the release of her husband Florestan. Stephen Rooke's Florestan was broken enough for theatrical verisimilitude, but, sadly, his vocal control left a lot to be desired. Andrew Murphy played Don Pizarro with fine musical command and gangsterish blackness, though, as his nemesis, the upright Don Fernando, Owen Gilhooly was strangely cool and automaton-like.
Designer Dick Bird's minimalist approach and muted costumes, and Colin Grenfell's lighting mostly let the setting speak for itself, which it did, ensuring that, warts and all, the new OTC Fidelio actually amounts to rather more than the sum of its parts.
Continues on September 23rd, 25th, 27th, 29th. There is a multimedia concert performance with the Ulster Orchestra in Derry on October 7th, 01-6794962
Michael Dervan
Faustus
Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast
Since its opening in London in 1971, Steven Rumbelow's adaptation of Marlowe's Faustus - with passing nods to Goethe and Byron - toured continuously for 14 years to hundreds of cities in over 20 countries. In 1980, he directed it as an award-winning film and a reworked screen version is due for release in 2007. All of which suggests that this intense 65-minute double-hander has been consistently hitting the right notes in the right order.
In his programme note for Bruiser's Irish premiere, Rumbelow offers a clear rationale as to why he has stripped Marlowe's flamboyant original of its bells and smells and incantations and tableaux and gorgeous women and evocations of the deadly sins, to reveal a brisk, philosophical two-step between the intellectually insatiable academic and the fallen angel who comes to claim his soul - effectively, two sides of the same coin.
Initially, director Lisa May appears to have departed from Bruiser's traditional style in favour of a sharper, sparer production. Tony Flynn's Mephistopheles is a seductively saturnine, tail-coated lounge lizard, effortlessly holding Jim Roche's rumpled, moon-faced Faustus in his thrall.
Rumbelow serves up lavish helpings of Marlowe's lush, picture-strewn poetry, but the speed and hyperactivity of Roche's portrayal of Faustus, as a man whose words can scarcely keep pace with the contradictory brilliance of his thoughts, does not always do it full justice. Some slick stage business, complete with fire magic, blurry back-projections and familiar Bruiser mime techniques, is employed to convey the pair's whistle-stop final tour of the world. But somewhere in all of this, the clarity and gravity of Faust's terrible pact is diluted - and with it the impact of this minimalist updating of a Jacobean masterpiece, whose creator was light years ahead of his time.
Runs until September 26th, then tours to Thurles, Enniskillen, Downpatrick, Limerick, Drogheda, Mullingar, Ballina, Antrim, Coleraine, Cork, Derry, Armagh and Lisburn
Jane Coyle
Michael Quinn (organ)
Pro-Cathedral, Dublin
Ned Rorem - Fanfare and Fugue (Organ book III). Cage - Souvenir. Daan Manneke - Pneo. Martin - Agnus Dei pour orgue. Duruflé - Toccata Op 5.
Michael Quinn was completely in charge of this unusual and demanding programme of 20th-century organ music. Not one of these pieces could even remotely be considered a walk in the park, for the player or the listener. Yet the recital worked well, partly because Quinn was clear-sighted about how to make the best of each piece.
The Fanfare and Fugue (1989) by the 83-year-old American, Ned Rorem, was a fine example of how a serious genre can be made to sound rather cheeky. John Cage's Souvenir was written in 1983. Its quirky sonorities, and suggestive repetitions and variations keep you on tip-toe as to what might happen next. The only reason one knows for sure that it's finished is the heavy clunk of the stop-cancel button.
The Dutch composer Daan Manneke wrote Pneo in 1979. The title and musical style were inspired by the unusual sonorities of an outdoor wind organ. Technically demanding and harmonically extreme, it is also unusually specific in specifying stop combinations and frequent changes of combination. So one of its main challenges is in reinterpreting those instructions for each instrument. On this occasion, Michael Quinn rose to the challenge with gusto. In the hundreds of organ recitals I have been to over 40 years, I don't think I have ever heard such a range of colour - odd, yet riveting.
After that, the Agnus Dei for organ, from Frank Martin's Mass for Double Choir (1922), sounded antique and suitably relaxing. It also emphasised the comparative modernity of Duruflé's Toccata, from the Suite Op. 5 (1932). I prefer this piece a bit more reckless. But it nevertheless made a fine conclusion to one of the best organ recitals I have heard in several years from any Irish organist under 30.
Martin Adams
