Irish Times writers review Apollo and Hyacinthus Opera Theatre Company, Zrazy, Tynan Collins and Broken Social Scene.
Apollo and Hyacinthus Opera Theatre Company
O'Reilly Theatre, Belvedere College, Dublin
Michael Dervan
"The two childish entertainments, Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebotes and Apollo et Hyacinthus," suggested Edward J Dent in his 1913 "critical study", Mozart's Operas, "may be dismissed at once." Opera Theatre Company's artistic director, Annilese Miskimmon, obviously begs to differ. Her new production of Apollo, mounted in association with the Classical Opera Company, opened at the O'Reilly Theatre in Dublin on Friday. After touring Ireland it will be seen in Britain, Italy and France.
Miskimmon adds a character to the original, in the form of the perky, 11-year-old composer himself, having him frame the action, and intervene as an on-stage creator, taking child-like delight in the business of controlling the happenings on stage.
The circumstances of the première of Apollo are most unlikely to be re-created today. Firstly, the piece was part of a much larger, non-musical work. What Mozart composed were the musical interludes inserted between the acts of a longer Latin tragedy, Clementia Croesi, by Fr Rufinus Widl.
Widl also provided the libretto for Apollo, in which the original, all-male cast was closer to the composer's age than to any likely list of 21st-century professionals. The singers were aged from 12 to 23, with an average of 16.
The ancient homoerotic triangle of Apollo, Hyacinthus and Zephyrus was broken in Widl's libretto by shifting the love interest onto Melia, a sister he created for Hyacinthus. Oddly, however, he didn't entirely clear up the text, and the first performance would of course have shown boys falling for boys.
Miskimmon's bouncing boy Mozart serves to remind us that this is the work of one of the most astonishing of child prodigies, one whose powers of invention are stronger than his overall sense of focus, at least in this work.
The OTC cast is not an even one. The two counter tenor roles pose challenges that are not mastered in James Laing's feeble Zephyrus or William Purefoy's uncompelling Apollo.
Mark Le Brocq conveys altogether greater passionate involvement as Oebalus, the king whose family is buffeted by the attentions of the amorous Apollo and his jealous rival, Zephyrus, who unsuccessfully attempts to pin the death of Oebalus's son, Hyacinthus, on Apollo rather than himself.
Michelle Sheridan plays Hyacinthus with enthusiasm and Sinéad Campbell also works hard at capturing the vitality of Melia. The pair put rather more pressure on passages of recitative than the words can bear in Richard Dearsley's English translation.
But their approach is in keeping with the spirit of the production as a whole, including designer Neil Irish's evocation of an 18th-century theatre, and conductor Ian Page's often thrusting manner. The brio of the 11-year-old Mozart's vivid imagination is what this production successfully sets out to highlight.
Tours to Sligo, Mullingar, Dundalk, Armagh, Galway, Limerick, Skibbereen. Information from 01-6794962 or www.opera.ie
Zrazy
Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray
Siobhán Long
One time hobo musicians (by their own admission), and now an ineffably cool jazz duo, Zrazy's natural home should surely be Manhattan's Blue Note, rather than Bray's (admittedly divine) Mermaid Theatre. Jazz lines intersect with funk and the odd stray samba rhythms, blissfully under the influence of Maria Walsh and Carole Nelson.
The electrical current that passes tangibly between this duo who formed Zrazy as far back as 1992, suggests a collaboration that still thrives on a delicious frisson of delight in one another's company. Their music is just about as languid as a drenched afternoon on the bayou, and yet it's tethered to neither geography nor history. In fact, a repertoire that swings from the romance of I Know When You Are Near to the melodrama of Private Wars and the quotidian frustrations of Parking Madsuggests that two times a seven year itch might be no bad thing for any relationship, whether personal or professional.
Hammocked by the superb drums of Kevin Brady and the pin prick basslines of Andrew Csibi, Walsh and Nelson took an indolent stroll through their back catalogue and lured their audience into a world where emotions stray ever skywards, only to be finally restrained by the pair's shared delight in pulling back from the precipice - with milliseconds to spare. And so, Five Birds celebrates the summer solstice with childlike wonder, Dream On delights in the thrill of sexual diversity and Ecstasy captures the indelible memories that characterise an intimate relationship infinitely better than any power ballad ever could. Even Cole Porter's Let's Fall In Love and a vastly reworked take on Billie Holiday's You Go To My Head become the sole property of Zrazy for a brief interlude.
Nelson's piano lines are as loose-limbed as a Sunday afternoon sofa-fest, and Walsh's vocals nestle into them, drenched in a familiarity and ease born of their years together. If eardrums had grey matter, Zrazy's music would be enough of an aural challenge to merit post-gig graduation for their punters. Instead though, most of us just left with our hips swivelling and brainwaves firing, hungry for more.
Tynan, Collins
John Field Room, NCH, Dublin
Andrew Johnstone
Not every soprano can reliably create the bel canto illusion of making an ample range seem more compact than it really is. Yet Kathleen Tynan negotiates wide leaps and changes of register with such skill that every note, high or low, has the same, distinct focus.
Her constantly vigilant voice production may not be without its costs in terms of colour and diction, but it secured for her an easy authority over both the music and her listeners. Maintaining an easy poise on stage, she allowed nothing to detract from the concentrated communicativeness of her singing.
Dearbhla Collins was an alert accompanist, flexible without ever losing the impetus, and always in sympathy with Tynan's intentions.
Their recital began with humour, and it was difficult not to laugh out loud at Mozart's cheeky rites-of-passage songs Die Verschweigung (The Concealment) and Der Zauberer (The Magician).
Though some awkward accentuation broke the spell of ecstatic serenity in his An Chloe (To Chloe), both Abendempfindung an Laura (Evening feelings for Laura) and Das Veilchen (The Violet), Mozart's only setting of Goethe, hit the mark of sophisticated simplicity.
Few composers have struck such a valedictory note in their early works as Richard Strauss, whose Lieder Op 10 followed the Mozart selection. Including all eight settings of Hermann von Gilm's wistful Letzte Blätter (Final Pages) it was a clearly pronounced, generous performance, short on intimate pianissimos but long on grand gestures.
Perhaps it was regrettable that the audience disrupted the cyclic, incremental aspect of the programming by applauding after every song.
But with music-making of this quality to enjoy, who could blame them?
Broken Social Scene
Temple Bar Music Centre, Dublin
Davin O'Dwyer
"You're very good," an audience member told Broken Social Scene a few songs into this exhilarating concert. "Very good?" replied bearded founder Brendan Canning. "We're aiming for more than that, we're aiming for transcendent." Such is the ambition of Toronto's Broken Social Scene. Often credited with kickstarting the current explosion in Canadian music, this sprawling collective have perfected a kind of challenging and uncompromising art rock, where experimentalism goes hand in hand with gorgeous melodies.
Their notoriously massive and revolving lineup, with over 20 musicians playing on their most recent album, is a who's who of the Canadian music scene, borrowing members of Metric, Do Make Say Think, The Dears, Stars and Apostle of Hustle. Touring conflicts mean that the lineup for this tour has been pared down to a still unwieldy 11. With all the musicians, instruments and sounds, the Broken Social Scene experience appears constantly on the verge of chaos. On record, the sound is dense, layered and oblique, while in performance the triumph is in seeing the countless guitars, trombone, sax, trumpets, violin, synth and two drummers cohere to create a spectacular and thrilling whole, so the whole evening becomes one long crescendo.
The nearly two and a half hour set consisted of practically all of their recent eponymous album, and most of their masterpiece, 2002's You Forgot It in People - an album that never received the attention on this side of the Atlantic that it garnered in north America.
Chief scenesters Canning and Kevin Drew nominally conducted proceedings, though largely in the sense that it was they who engaged in conversation with the crowd.
Canning, with his Woody Allen spectacles and bushy beard, is an unlikely rock star, while Drew worked the crowd with boyish enthusiasm, at one point jumping off the stage for a hugging session with the audience.
So energetic was the performance that three of the guitars simultaneously suffered broken strings on Major Label Debut, while tracks such as Ibi Dreams of Pavement, 7/4 (Shoreline), Lover's Spit, a hypnotic rendition of Bandwitch and the incendiary closer It's All Gonna Break, proved that Broken Social Scene are one of the most successfully ambitious bands currently at work.
Transcendent? Perhaps, but they were definitely much better than very good.
