A look at the world of the arts through the eyes of Irish Timesjournalists
RDS Opera Orchestra/Ó Duinn
RDS, Dublin
Benedict - Lily of Killarney
The Bohemian Girl (first produced in London in 1843), Maritana (1845) and The Lily of Killarney (1862) were the most successful operas written in English in the 19th century.
The three became known, initially pejoratively, as the "English" Ring, and later as the "Irish" Ring - the composers of the first two, Michael Balfe and William Vincent Wallace, were Irish, and although the third is by a German, the setting is Irish.
The momentum of their initial success kept these operas alive in a kind of suspended animation into the early decades of the 20th century. They were part of the musical world of James Joyce, and John McCormack could sing the music of all three composers with style.
But, apart from a few tuneful numbers, the operas have long been on the wrong side of public taste.
Even the RTÉ orchestras' commercial recordings of The Bohemian Girl (made for Argo in 1991) and Maritana (for Naxos in 1995) don't seem to have rekindled significant interest in the music.
Last year's Castleward Opera production of The Bohemian Girl was so wide of the mark that it's more likely to have done harm rather than good for the work's reputation.
I missed last year's RDS presentation of Maritana, but this weekend's concert performance of The Lily of Killarney at the same venue was fraught with problems.
Conductor Proinnsías Ó Duinn prepared the performing edition from original orchestral parts in the British Library - the publisher's stock of parts was destroyed, following the fate of many stage works that have fallen out of favour.
But his intimacy with the detail of the work didn't prevent his performance of it being a bit too cut and dried. His tendency was to conduct much of the piece as if it were a tight efficient drama. It's not. It's a kind of public version of parlour music, where sentiment is key.
Most of the singers were uncomfortable with both words and musical style. They sounded mostly stiff and often, literally, incomprehensible. They could as effectively have been singing the details of stock market prices set to music.
Bill Golding's narration substituted for the spoken dialogue and provided a few laughs. But his nod and wink guying of the plot offered a clear message that the whole thing was a curiosity not to be taken seriously.
The singer who conveyed the impression of taking it most seriously was Cara O'Sullivan as Eily O'Connor (the libretto is derived from Dion Boucicault's Coleen Bawn). O'Sullivan, of course, had the advantage of getting the best opportunity for vocal showing off.
But this was not the feature which made her contributions stand out.
She conveyed the impression of trying to take the music on its own terms, of searching in it for viable expressive content, and finding inflections in delivery which could hold the attention.
Hardly a word of Anthony Kearns's Hardress could be heard clearly where I was sitting and he suffered from the conductor's robustly pro-orchestra balances.
Celine Byrne's Ann Chute had strength but little subtlety, and Our Lady's Choral Society clearly relished the simple strength of the writing for chorus.
This is music which needs the loving care of specialist performers every bit as much as a little-known baroque opera. Otherwise the qualities which once made it popular will not be made evident again to contemporary listeners.
Michael Dervan
Starsailor/Peter Gabriel/
Crowded House
Marlay Park, Dublin
When you plan an outdoor concert in June, you don't expect torrential rain. But even when sheets of water fall from the heavens, the show must go on. And so the crowds splashed their way dutifully through puddles and streams to assemble in Marlay Park last Friday.
Starsailor and Crowded House made the most of a soggy situation. Crowded House frontman Neil Finn struck up a good rapport and choreographed synchronised umbrella lifting in the crowd. But despite tightly- turned-out ear pleasers like Weather With You (the irony was not lost) and Fall At Your Feet, at times the set sounded surprisingly pedestrian.
The skies dried and the crowd swelled in time for Gabriel's performance, his first in Ireland since 1993. He took the unusual step of letting fans choose the set list for this tour through his website, which meant we heard some songs that "hadn't been touched in a few years".
For hardcore fans who know his older albums - all called peter gabriel - hearing the early tracks revived onstage was a sensory feast.
The creepiness of Intruder, a gutsy rendition of DIY and Gabriel's daughter Melanie singing Mother of Violence all translated well against the inky backdrop of twilight at Marlay.
But these songs require patience to discover their genius, and a crowd wearing wellies and sodden jeans can sometimes lack that virtue.
As darkness crept in, Gabriel belted out the more familiar tunes; the thumping beats of Steam and the jaunty Solsbury Hill were welcome mood and foot lifters, and the showman Gabriel came out from behind the synth to skip around the stage, camping it up for the infectious Sledgehammer as an encore.
But, to the crowd's surprise, he did not perform the anti-apartheid anthem Biko as a final encore, and many trudged home wanting more.
Claire O'Connell
Connolly, RTÉ NSO/Maloney
NCH, Dublin
Shaun Davey - Granuaile. Relief of Derry Symphony
Boublil and Schönberg's The Pirate Queen may have foundered on Broadway, but Shaun Davey's original treatment of the same story is remarkably buoyant after 22 years.
Reworkings and fresh materials - some of them more welcome than others - keep the score vital.
Granuaile's new choral component (sung with grainy but alert sweep by a detachment of voices from Old St Patrick's Church, Chicago) tastes a little too strongly of a Hollywood epic; gone is the icily fascinating harpsichord part that once introduced The Rescue of Hugh de Lacy.
On the plus side, the opening scene is now set by an evocative slow air (piped by Liam O'Flynn), and the squally and menacing Sir Richard Bingham is enhanced by some neat meteorological imagery from the percussion.
Though the Relief of Derry Symphony's first two movements might yet benefit from a few cuts, an expanded church-bell episode has distinctly improved the proportions and impact of its finale.
But what really continues to drive this genre-straddling music is its composer's fervent and subcutaneous identification with his subject matter.
This concert wasn't staple classical fare for conductor Gavin Maloney and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, who generated the thrills less by precision than by brute force. But contributions from the remote squadrons of trumpets and the promenading pipe and drum band were decisive.
On saxophone, Kenneth Edge wound down the symphony in easy balance with the orchestra, although some crudely managed amplification had taken its toll on the traditional instruments and the vocals.
It was in the more rugged numbers of Granuaile that solo vocalist Rita Connolly best recaptured the aplomb of her 1980s recording.
While a tense vibrato and some close-fitting high notes could detract from her more introspective moments, the wistful Death of Richard-an-Iarrainn still beguiled.
Andrew Johnstone
