Irish Times reviewers on Bruce Springsteen at the RDS, and the Puccini Festival at Castleward Opera.
Bruce Springsteen
RDS, Dublin
By Tony Clayton -Lea
Sometimes all you need to hear to realise that the old fashioned and important values of rock music (redemption, exultation and the internal conflicts between what is intrinsically right and wrong) still mean something is a few chords and the plain truth.
When bluster and bombast are stripped away - when you've got a singer with a guitar or a piano and a song that says something real and honest in a straightforward manner - you've got something truly special and valid.
If you follow the line of argument that states rock music is at its best when it stays within certain boundaries - not claustrophobically boxed in but simply aware of its own limitations - then Bruce Springsteen's concert at Dublin's RDS on Saturday was indeed rock music at its best.
Of course, Springsteen concerts have their own history: epic, mythic, never unwieldy, never experimental in the arty sense of the word, never short-changing.
For some, a concert that lasts for three hours is one that lasts 60 minutes too long, and there were instances dotted throughout the set when you'd look at people in the crowd and in the VIP area and you know they'd wish Bruce (and his cohorts in the justifiably acclaimed E-Street band) would just nail down the tune and get on with the next one.
Anyone with an inkling of what it is that makes Springsteen tick, however, will know that to just get on with the next one is an alien concept to him. The fact is there are few of his kind around these days, too few artists that straddle the interface between community and communication.
Interestingly, Springsteen succeeds on three levels.
Crudely put, his songs fall into one of three categories: straight-laced/straight-faced ballads, pulsating rock tunes and bar-band party hoedowns. While the latter allow the E-Street band to flex their not inconsiderable muscles (notably in Mary's Place ), it's the latter two formats that strike at the heart and the head.
Songs such as Glory Days, Badlands, Dancing In The Dark, Candy's Room and Springsteen's signature rock tune, Born To Run, have all the propulsive qualities stadium rock cries out for.
The mournful and more resonant hues of Lonesome Day, Empty Sky, My City Of Ruins, Atlantic City, Into The Fire and You're Missing (each sung as gently as a hymn) might be the antithesis of stadium rock but they work in a way that defies genre convention.
And Springsteen himself? He mugs theatrically, dances very badly and emotes in a way only someone who really means it can. It is surely no mistake to note that as he grows older (he's approaching 54) his face is attaining Mount Rushmore character and definition.
Likewise his status as a rock'n' roll icon and a man who truly is tougher and much more tender than the rest.
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Puccini Festival
Castleward Opera by Michael Dervan
Castleward Opera's Puccini Festival, which opened on Friday, is alternating one of Puccini's most successful operas, Tosca, with one of his least frequently heard, La rondine.
Tosca is as robust a piece of operatic engineering as the late 19th century produced (the premiére took place in January 1900) and Jamie Hayes's production largely took it at face value - among his redundant extras was a threatening twitch from Scarpia's body (horror-movie style, minutes after the apparent completion of the death throes), and lighting designer Patrick McLaughlin rather overdid the red on a number of occasions.
But the thrust was effective, and David Craig's sets, which included an elaborate cupola as vertical backdrop to the church of Act I, enabled one to forget the restrictions of the tiny stage.
Catherine Mikic and Ruslan Zinevych were a persuasively youthful Tosca and Cavaradossi. Mikic sounded free in voice and spirit, though Zinevych, who never side-stepped the big effect, showed signs of strain and tonal degradation in some of the more expansive gestures.
Charles Johnston cut moments of sly sweetness into the menacing bark of Scarpia, and won some appreciative hisses for his villainy when he came to take his curtain call. In the smaller roles, Alan Fairs was an appropriately pliable Sacristan; the other parts were taken with variable presence and success.
Conductor Jeremy Silver handled the orchestra in a broad brush-stroke manner, missing much of the detail that should be communicable with a small orchestra in such a small venue.
Tosca fared better than La rondine, a work which is now mostly remembered through just a single, popular aria, Che il bel sogno di Doretta. Brian MacKay's conducting was flaccid, and director Tom Hawkes didn't rein in performers like Eugene O'Hagan, whose Prunier, prompted perhaps by the use of an English translation (by Robert Hess), defaulted uncomfortably to camp panto style.
The sets, again by David Craig, made effective use of the split level stage and the period-style costumes, again by Peter Rice, were easy on the eye.
Naomi Harvey as Magda seemed at her best when the music was in full, Puccinian flow, though traffic kept me from hearing her big Act I number.
Sean Ruane had some lovely moments as Ruggero, but didn't sound to be delivering his full potential on the opening night, and Lucy Bates's Lisette sounded increasingly less comfortable the higher and louder she sang.
La rondine needs treatment altogether more deft and exact than Castleward managed to muster on this occasion.
The Castleward Puccini Festival continues at Castle Ward House, near Strangford, Co. Down, until Saturday, June 21st (048-9066 1090).
