Baritone Roland Davitt is a comparative late-comer to a professional singing career. Aged 25, he has just completed his musical studies at the Dublin Institute of Technology and is about to go to the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Last Wednesday lunchtime, he and pianist Alison Young presented a recital of 16 songs, ranging from late Baroque to early 20th century.
One of the consistently strong points was Roland Davitt's quality of tone. While there were uneven spots at transitions between high, medium and low registers, the sound was always full and pleasing. And Davitt's strong stage presence played an important part in projecting the character of each song.
Davitt has sung for Opera Theatre Company, and his most well-rounded performances were in operatic and similar pieces, in excerpts from Handel's Judas Maccabaeus and Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, for example. His handling of songs by Faure, Beethoven and Schumann was less convincing, mainly because his concentration on tone, and Alison Young's accompanying, did not allow him to home in on the intimate, conversational relationship between text, vocal part and piano part.
Nevertheless, these strengths were not far away. An affecting account of Moore's deceptively simple She is Far From the Land reinforced the impression that Roland Davitt is a singer of serious potential.