Irish Opera Singers in Munich

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 http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/a-world-of-song/programmes/2015/0531/705081-a-world-of-song-sunday-31-may-2015/?clipid=1894743

Click on the link above to Liz Nolan's wonderfully insightful interview with mezzo soprano Tara Erraught in the Sunday World of Song slot on RTE LyricFM .  As Nolan herself put it-'Erraught is a  highly perceptive commentator on her art and milieu'.

Ms Erraught is the guest soloist in an opera gala with RTE NSO on Friday at the NCH. The concert will be broadcast live. I travelled to hear her perform with the same orchestra recently in an oddly balanced programme. My review here 

Dean Power Jonas Kaufman

http://cathydesmond.blogspot.ie/2014/06/taragate-some-musings.html

I experienced at first hand some of the inner workings of the Munich Opera House myself recently when I interviewed tenor Dean Power in January backstage. That piece appeared in the Irish Examiner in February  and you can read it here . I think it has been the most widely shared piece of the two dozen or so pieces filed.

Ms Erraught made light of the trials of travelleing and being away from home. I wondered about the generation of opera singers who made careers for themselves in Europe before there were daily flights to Irish airports . One such singer is John O Flynn, a bass from Cork returned from Munich to contribute much  to Irish musical life as director of the Irish Operatic Repertory Co. 

Festive Music: ICO Joyeux Noel

 

Irish Chamber Orchestra

Katherine Hunka Director

Ailish Tynan Soprano

Rudi de Groote Cello

Cliona Doris Harp 

• Saint-Saëns          Le deluge Op. 45, Prélude
• Vivaldi                  Paris Concerto No. 2 in E minor, RV 133
• 
  
• Mahler                  Adagietto (from Symphony No. 5)
• Britten                  Les Illuminations
• Debussy               Sacred & Profane Dances for Harp and Strings
• Francaix               From Quinze Portraits D’Enfants
•                             In the Luxembourg garden
•                             Madame Charpentier’s Children
•                             At the Piano
•                            The Baby with a Spoon
•                            The Schoolboy
• Martinet             Le Petit Papa Noel
• Wade                  Adeste Fidelis   
• Saint-Saëns       The Swan (from Carnival of the Animals)
• Gruber/Mohr     Silent Night

I enjoyed the Irish Chamber Orchestra's festive French themed programme in the magnificent Gothic stone St Fin Barre's Cathedral .  You can read my review which appeared in Saturday's Irish Examiner here  It was a great pleasure  to hear soprano Ailish Tynan. I last heard her when she was  a guest soloist in Chansons d'Auvergne for a concert with Maynooth University Orchestra of which I was a member around 2001 or so. She was just setting off to begin her studies in London. where she now lives and enjoys a very successful career. The Francaix pieces escaped mention. They wee described by Liz Nolan in her comprehensive programme notes as 'bright, bumptious and gleeful'. Just right. 

Jorg Widmann

It isn't that long since I heard the ICO at their home base at UCH  . I had imagined that the Wunderkind of the programme title applied to the conductor  Jorg Widmann who was all over the programme as conductor , chamber music musician and composer in an impressive display of mulit tasking
. In fact the title applied to the Mendelssohn whose teenage works formed the mainstay of the programme.  You can read that review here 

63rd Wexford Festival

I spent a couple of days in Wexford at the 63rd Opera Festival. My reviews on two of the main house productions are filed with The Irish Examiner .. My review of opening night went into print on Saturday and a second review  will be in Wednesday's edition. I may not have been ''Wilde; about a French version of Salomé but  it looked gorgeous and a Silent Night from across the Atlantic was all the things that made for a thrilling evening of opera and lived up  to high expectations. Both Mark Campbell and composer Kevin Puts were in Wexford to add a bit  of transatlantic pzazz to the occasion. Campbell tells me  he has no less than 13 opera libretto projects on the go at the moment. Clearly a very busy man. It was good to read Tom Mooney's moving piece Forgotten Voices on the Wexford men who went to war including the Wexford Echo editor's  own grandfather.

Salomé Beautiful ciaroscuro effects Lighting Design DM Wood

Marty with Silent Night team

After a couple of ho hum years, it was good to see a festival buzz back in the foyer in Whites Hotel with the Lyric FM crew ensconced in a corner. Liz Nolan in pearls and little black dress added glamour chatting to the stars and Marty Whelan looked sartorially splendid with lilac  tie  matching the station banner. Such attention to detail . We like it ! Good also to see the short works reinstated here after the years of grim exile in a local school hall. I saw a terrific double bill of English works. The cast of a G&S piece, Trial by Jury hammed it all up beautifully and the ensemble at full throttle sounded like a much  larger chorus . Holst's  The Wandering Scholar was a hoot and the cast extracted every ounce of the comedy with energetic madcap performances.  Musical director, Janet Haney's piano accompaniment was light and sparkling. An afternoon tea-time delight. .

The international contingent were well represented. Remarkably, critic, Michael Kennedy was attending for his 63rd time having attended every festival. 

Heather Humphreys was back in Wexford to announce the anointing of the house as the National Opera House to great cheers. ( I commented on the minister's rather anticlimactic post curtain call address after the IYO production last month in my Examiner review here. Little did we realise what a harsh spotlight would be shone on the Arts Minister in the week's that followed.)  Quite what the designation as national opera centre will mean in practice, nobody was quite sure. One thing puzzled me though about  the announcement quoted here. 

 And I am delighted to be able to give my full support tonight to the renaming of Wexford Opera House as The National Opera House. I have asked my officials to work with Wexford and the Arts Council to put this into effect, in recognition ofWexford’s position as the home of Ireland’s only custom built Opera House.

Now where have I seen that phrase or something very like it before? This is the description on the website of Cork Opera House '

'The Cork Opera House is the only purpose built Opera House in the country'

''only custom built opera house in the country

'only purpose built opera house in the country;

Purpose built / custom built. If there is a distinction, it seems very subtle. I do hope for the Minister's sake that the Leesiders won't take umbrage.

I didn't see Don Bucefalo, a comic opera but I gather it was great fun. It will be broadcast on Saturday on LyricFM. Silent Night goes out on the 8th November also on Lyric FM .

Wexford Festival continues with all sorts of fringe  activities to suit high and low brows from Singing Pubs, short operas, art exhibitions and recitals in addition to the three  main house productions. 

Related posts on Cathy's Reviews 

http://cathydesmond.blogspot.ie/2011/10/wexford-festival-2011.html

http://cathydesmond.blogspot.ie/2012/11/the-trimmings-wexford-festival-opera.html

http://cathydesmond.blogspot.ie/2013/11/mighty-mighty-wexford.html

Cathy's Reviews: Maria at Wexford Festival Opera 2011

Nov 07, 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 ...

http://cathydesmond.blogspot.com/

Wexford Festival for Comic Opera, Cava and Canapés

Oct 27, 2010

Wexford with its attractive seaside port position looks very pleasant in the autumn sunshine. The first sounds ... The fringe festival is what brings me to Wexford annually and there is plenty to amuse and entertain . One of the ...

http://cathydesmond.blogspot.com/

Cathy's Reviews: Love Hat: Il Capello di Paglia di Firenze ...

Oct 24, 2013

The 62nd season of opera productions at Wexford opened in fine style with Il Capello di Paglia di Firenze, a fizzy light hearted comedy from the 20th century Italian composer, Nino Rota, better known for his film scores than ...

http://cathydesmond.blogspot.com/

Cathy's Reviews: Review of the year 2011: A Magificent Seven

Feb 18, 2012

I loved the quirky production of Dido and Aeneas at Cork Opera House but if I have to choose one of the shorter works I enjoyed the opera production of Gianni Schicchi directed by Roberto Recchia at Whites Hotel,Wexford.

http://cathydesmond.blogspot.com/