IF DEREK Walsh is anything to go by, the music of Michael William Balfe should really be wrapped in seaweed - or something equally organic - and marketed as a sure-fire formula for energy and longevity, writes Arminta Wallace.
The sprightly octogenarian, whose enthusiasm for Balfe's music is as contagious as his devotion to Balfe's legacy is impressive, has organised an exhibition of material connected to the Victorian composer.
Scores, libretti, photographs and other documents from Walsh's comprehensive private collection will be on display at the RDS next Sunday, June 29th, when a concert performance of Balfe's best-known opera, The Bohemian Girl, will celebrate the bicentenary of the composer's birth.
With a flourish worthy of a professional magician, Walsh pulls a hand-written letter from his briefcase and offers it for my inspection. Nobody, he informs me with a wicked grin, has held this letter in their hand for more than a century - which is enough to make me hold it somewhat gingerly out of range of the froth on my half-finished coffee. It turns out to be a note from Balfe to his librettist Alfred Bunn, written in a generous, flamboyant hand and outlining his idea for a new opera.
Balfe declares that this story of an Austrian princess who grows up among gypsies is so delightful that if the pair succeed in setting it to music, "the World will acknowledge that Bunn and Balfe are two damned clever fellows".
The world, as it happens, did all that and more. The Bohemian Girlwas a roaring success, adding to Balfe's already high standing on the international opera stage. The Viking Opera Guide pronounces him "the most prolific British opera composer of his generation and arguably the most popular of the 19th century". Except that he wasn't British. He was Irish, born in May 1808 in what is now Balfe Street in Dublin (renamed, in 1917, from its previous incarnation as Pitt Street). His father was a dancing-school master and young Michael W. was a musical prodigy who gave his first public performance - on the violin - at the Rotunda Rooms at the age of nine.
He also possessed a fine baritone voice, and after his father's death he went to London, then to Italy, to study as a singer - making his debut, at Rossini's invitation, as Figaro in an 1828 production of The Barber of Seville. Balfe went on to study composition, and his output included a symphony and a cantata called Mazeppa. But it was his ballad-style operas - 28 of them - full of effortless melodies which used to be published and sung in drawing-rooms, which brought him the greatest fame. His works were rapturously received by audiences in Italy, France, Austria and especially in London, where Balfe, mutton-chop Victorian sideburns and all, was a celebrity. Translated into French, German and Italian, they were often performed by the top singers of the day - including Maria Malibran, the Callas of her generation.
Balfe's extraordinary career is chronicled by Derek Walsh's brother Basil in a new biography published to celebrate the bicentenary of his birth. How did the Walsh brothers become such ardent Balfeans? "Well, my father was very interested in music," says Derek. "He sang as a hobby. So from an early age my brother and I grew up with music, both symphonic and operatic. I started collecting in the late 1940s and it went on from there." But as Walsh admits with a sad shake of the head, Balfe's music has fallen out of fashion in recent years and the bicentenary celebrations are not as extensive as Balfe devotees might have expected.
Apart from next Sunday's performance of The Bohemian Girl, Opera Ireland has just announced that it will mount a performance of Balfe's Falstaffas part of its autumn schedule. In other quarters, however - including the BBC Proms series - the Balfe bicentenary has been greeted by a dismaying silence. Why no recitals of his songs by young singers? Why no new recordings of those famously charming melodies? Walsh is clearly saddened by this apparent indifference to a musician who was not only internationally successful, but a particularly decent chap into the bargain.
At 80, however, he says he no longer gets upset about things which are beyond his control. "Let's be practical about this," he says. "Balfe would be on the third step of the operatic ladder. At the top would be Puccini and Verdi and Mozart. Everybody knows that. But he was one of the most internationally successful musicians we have ever produced, and I think it's wrong for Ireland to have ignored him and to have virtually ignored this bicentenary."
One day, musicologists will doubtless be perusing his Balfe material - which he plans to leave to the State - in search of unpublished documents and undiscovered musical gems. In the meantime, Walsh will be present at the RDS on the afternoon of the performance to answer questions about the exhibition from interested parties. Go; ask; listen. He has some fantastic stories to tell.
The Bohemian Girl , with the RDS Opera Orchestra, Our Lady's Choral Society and soloists including Ailish Tynan and Robin Tritschler, will be conducted by Proinnsias Ó Duinn at the RDS on June 29th at 3.30pm.