Cool Blackwater Barber

Ah June- that magical  pre-exam time of sunshine and balmy evenings. Perfect for picnics  on the lawn and putting a tent up in the garden. So to Lismore Music Festival in the enchanting Blackwater Valley, Co Waterford for an evening of sparkling Rossini in the Castle Grounds.  Turning off the main road at Cahir, the drive  to Lismore through the Vee Valley in the Knockmealdown Mountains was magical with a clamour of purple rhodedendrons in full bloom lining the route .



With a relatively late start of 8.30 pm,  presumably to better facilitate the die-hard picnic brigade and to allow changing natural illumination, the festival  production of The  Barber of Seville commenced in the canopied disused stable yard in the grounds  of Lismore Castle.   The large cast was well chosen with petite Rosina, Pervin Chakar nicely matched by Almaviva played by Puerto Rican tenor Javier Abreu. Star of the show in the title role was  Limerick baritone,  Owen Gilhooly who commanded the stage in every respect from his hilarious arrival on baby blue vespa scooter even adding his own sympathetic guitar accompaniment  in the balcony serenade. Sandra Oman  almost stole some of scenes in her role of Berta, a  perky bar maid  and there was much slapstick jocularity particularly in the final scene before slimy Dr Bartolo (Damon Nestor Ploumis),  inevitably took a dive in the fountain at the finale. Other Irish singers included Gerard O Connor as Don Basilio and Mark Duff as Fiorillo. The device of having

Barber Gilhooly 

the recitatives in English with the arias sung in Italian worked very well and eliminated any hankering after surtitles. There was a very fine seven piece on stage instrumental ensemble led from the harpsichord by David Adams even if the outdoor acoustic was inevitably not too kind to strings.

I note that director Dieter Kaegi spent ten years at the Aix en Provence Festival helm and the experience had many elements in common with a visit to Theatre l'Archeveché , the existing structures of a historical building integrated into the open air set. Here the shabby stable doors  and courtyard fountain

Figaro's Vespa

perfectly evoked a provincial  town piazza. It differed  in one  respect however -the temperature.   Sadly it wasn't just the quality of the performances that sent shivers down our spines as Lismore Music Festival 2012  was not blessed with fine weather although the capacity Sunday night audience were spared the downpours that dampened  Saturday proceedings.

'Rossini' Cocktail du Jour 
at OBrien's Chop House

Maybe it was this aspect of the evening that reinforced my ambivalence about the al fresco opera experience. Opera in the Open in a Dublin Civic space appealed  to me because it made a daytime opera experience easily available and accessible to lots of people who wouldn't normally attend . With a surfeit of well appointed theatres  and  a defecit of events to fill them  in driving distance of Lismore, does it make sense to mount an expensive  production in an outdoor space heavily reliant on an aspect of the production you can't control,- the weather? While I  found this production to be thoroughly engaging and great fun with  fine ensemble singing and acting and some  remarkable individual performances , one couldn't say the evening was very comfortable. Opera began in the homes of the Florentine aristocracy but at Lismore, there was a sense that we could play in the garden but not in the house as no part of the tantalising  interior of the splendid  castle was open to us for any part of the evening apart from the entrance courtyard.

Nevertheless, the 2012 LMF production of The Barber of Seville was  one of  great flair and imagination and cast &crew fully deserved their standing ovation  from a full house at the close .Next year's production  is the Mozart's Magic Flute and the programme  is extended to include recitals at Salterbridge,  Cappoquin  and Tourin Houses.  I am looking forward to seeing LMF develop in this beautiful and under rated part of the country.
 

Stableyard Lismore

Courtyard  Aix en Provence

Maria at Wexford Festival Opera 2011

Having successfully dipped into the  fringe events earlier this week I returned to Wexford Opera House for one of the main events and attended the last night of Maria  by Polish composer Statkowski. Some very  useful context for the opera was delivered  by assistant director Jack Furness at the excellent  pre show talk.  We learned that Maria was based on an epic poem of 'dire pessimism' the only known work of the poet. Statkowski wrote only two operas and this was the first time the work was heard outside Poland where it was infrequently performed.  So, altogether,  perfect programming by artistic director David Agler  in the 'overlooked rare gem'  category cultivated in Wexford programming.

Opera set in Walesa's Poland

Polish  director  Michael Gielata has updated  the plot from 17th century to  1980's Poland, the era of Lech Walensa and Solidarnosc, and as a device it works very well  most of the time. (However, there is an amusing moment when Maria sings of welcoming back her valiant hero by stringing up her lute and singing moonlit laments which might be a fun time in 17th century  but  unless it is slang is unlikely to have your 20th century warrior charging back from the frontline!). Like Gianni Schicchi, it features ennui  at marriage outside social class with country girl Maria, daughter of a lowly civil servant considered an unsuitable match by the vain glorious father in law, Count Palatine, who orders her to be abducted and disposed of by his henchmen.  The first half finishes with a party scene with all the men in military uniform and the women in maxi dresses and hairdos familiar from photos of memory lane columns of any local paper digging through the late 70's early 80's archive. There are folk dancers in Lithuanian costume and the the party goers awkwardly disco dancing to the romantic orchestral music used the dichotomy between original setting and staging to good comic effect.

Rafal Bartminski 

The production uses superb black and white stills featuring austere images of  1980's Poland to great effect. (Apparently the Polish ambassador recognised his own face in one of the stills). The second act  violence was very imaginatively conveyed with a video inset but went on a tad  longer than  necessary.  The singing was of a high standard as you would expect but two performances stay in the mind. The Polish tenor Rafal Bartminski was very impressive as Maria's  lover and the ghostly Waif played by Eleanor Jean Greenwood in concentration camp garb, striped pyjamas and head shaven,  appears in two haunting scenes. It is the waif that tells Vaclav the awful truth about Maria's death  followed swiftly by his suicide in order to be reunited with his beloved a la  Tristan and Isolde or Romeo and Juliet. I was slightly disappointed not to see a ghostly image of  Maria galloping by on a white horse at this point but the only large white animal making an appearance was a bear costume concealing a bunny girl in the party scene.

The orchestration is rich and  played against the black and white images gives  an early Hollywood film score vibe. One of the highlights is a hymn sungs acapella  in unison by the male chorus before they go off to battle .

I am fortunate to have attended  a number of opera events over the past year  around Europe and   Wexford was the  most formal. Dress suits appear de rigeur (even in the cheap seats) and there were  lots of really nice frocks.  (My brother some years ago arrived in Wexford and  thought he would take in a show. Being without the appropriate attire, he visited the local Oxfam shop where he was kitted out in fine style. Wexford is that kind of town.) Several former  government ministers,  were among the attendees and well they might enjoy the fruits of the large state funding for the project. Despite the promotional rates we saw  very few under 35's and the audience seemed to be mostly retired senior folk. The challenge for the Wexford Opera, now more than ever is surely to to broaden the demographic of its audience. Tickets are relatively pricey*  but  the production values are unquestionably   top class.

 I do  feel incidental  expenses were excessive;  the festival programme pricing was high (€20) and  if you fancy something sparkling, a glass of champagne was rather too expensive at €16 for a glass and the more reasonably cava referred to in my blog post for 2010 seemed not to be on offer either in  the Opera House or White's Hotel.

I brought along my tape recorder and recorded the thoughts of the people I met - see below.

We enjoyed our trip to this prestigious musical offering and we look forward to returning next season.

*See also Michael Dervan's review in the Irish Times
*Jessica Duchen's blog 'haunted by Maria'