Mary Hegarty's singing of Maria's double-aria from Donizetti's La fille de regiment was the highlight of Saturday's concert at the NCH. The Cork soprano's strong attack and accurate divisions in the martial second part perfectly complemented her limpid tone in the poignant cavatina. She wasn't quite as successful with the similarly-structured scena from Verdi's La traviata, where the good line of the first part was spoiled by a garbled finish. Otherwise, her clear diction and unerring dramatic sense consistently enhanced solos and duets from operas by Rossini, Mozart, Massenet, Puccini and Verdi.
I liked Edmund Barham's ardent performances of the tenor solos from Verdi's Macbeth and La forza del destino. Elsewhere, the English tenor encountered some tuning difficulties in otherwise musicallystylish and trumpet-toned accounts of arias from Pagliacci and Meyerbeer's L'Africaine. He was quite thrilling, though, in the famous duet from Bizet's Pecheurs de perles.
His partner here, the Polish baritone Marcin Bronikowski, started well with a smooth Ah per sempre from Bellini's I puritani. He was a dangerous Count opposite Ms Hegarty's knowing Susanna in the duet from Mozart's Figaro, offered swagger and bombast as required in the arias from Carmen and Rossini's Barber, and sang Verdi's Eri tu with great authority. I would worry about a huskiness that developed whenever he pushed the tone too much. And, although his subtle tempo variations showed a musical mind at work, I wish he and accompanist Brenda Hurley had rehearsed them more thoroughly.
There was even more untidiness of ensemble whenever the Bray Choral Society joined in with the soloists. On its own, Frank Kelly's choir gave us decent renderings of Verdi's Va pensiero and the conductor's own arrangement of The Minstrel Boy. But the opening Aida march, despite strong attack from the basses, was thin-toned on top and rhythmically undermined by David Braemner's unsynchronised organ accompaniment.
