Neil Young at Malahide Castle and The Bohemian Girl at the RDS Concert Hall in Dublin

Neil Young
Malahide Castle

Two weeks after Leonard Cohen seduced the crowds at Kilmainham, it was the turn of another Canadian musical legend to dust off his back catalogue and charm an adoring audience. A maple-leaf flag fluttered over the turret of Malahide Castle and the sun shone down, a perfect setting for a vintage performance from a timeless performer.

Neil Young has never been too inclined to do things in a conventional way, from his "experimental" albums in the 1980s to his notoriously unpredictable setlists, but this show was as close to a greatest- hits show as he is likely to play. Anyone who still thought of Young as a folk hero, thanks to Harvestor After the Gold Rush, was quickly disabused of that notion. He launched into the fierce guitar riff of Love and Only Love, not uttering a word for a good five minutes, a frenetic start that set the tone for the evening.

Age cannot wither Young, his passion and energy astonishing for a man who was nearly killed by an aneurysm a few years ago. Draped in a paint-dappled shirt that looked as if Jackson Pollock had gone to town on it, he bent and swayed into classics such as Powderfinger, Mr Souland My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue). This is a musician who long ago turned his back on the orthodoxy of the three-minute hit, opting instead for mastering the 10-minute epic, and here he rejoiced in long guitar solos that demonstrated that he is as much a guitar god as a singer-songwriter.

Not every song was as ferocious, the pace dipping for an acoustic, country-tinged middle section - The Needle and the Damage Done, in particular, was perfectly rendered, with the whole crowd belting out the line "Every junkie's like a setting sun", just as the last rays of the day were bouncing off the clouds.

He finished, unexpectedly, with a raucous, coruscating A Day in the Life, brilliantly appropriating the sound of Lennon and McCartney, but it also served as a reminder that while so many of his 1960s peers now live as faded reminders of their younger selves, Neil Young hasn't faded at all.
DAVIN O'DWYER

The Bohemian Girl
RDS Concert Hall, Dublin

Who is Michael Balfe? For a certain generation, this is nearly as silly a question as "who is Andrew Lloyd Webber?".

That certain generation - born in the 1920s-1940s - made up most of the capacity audience at this performance of Balfe's The Bohemian Girl, the Dublin-born composer's extraordinarily popular opera. It was first performed in London in 1843 and, alone among 19th-century "British" operas, was a success around Europe, remaining in the mainstream repertoire until the first World War.

It then survived via touring companies until the 1930s. This means, however, that even the older audience members owe their long, affectionate acquaintance with it to their parents, who belonged to a pre-wireless era when parties often ended, in Victorian middle-class tradition, with songs around the piano in the drawing-room. The repertoire for these occasions long included "hits" from The Bohemian Girl, most notably I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls.

Many who've never heard of Balfe have heard this song. So naturally there were higher expectations of this moment in the performance than of any other. Although the actual words seemed a little recessed, soprano Ailish Tynan certainly delivered the innocent longing and bewilderment of the eponymous girl, Arline. Tynan also shone in later vocal acrobatics, which she tossed off with ease and relish.

The rest of the all-Irish cast were also strong. Mezzo Fiona Murphy brought heat to the role of the jealous gypsy queen, Arline's rival for the love of Thaddeus, sung with a non-Italianate, Lieder-style directness by tenor Robin Tritschler. Baritone Damian Smyth and emerging bass John Molloy were persuasive in supporting roles, and you were grateful for the buffotheatrics of tenor Paul McNamara.

Also helpful were Bill Golding's often tongue-in-cheek narrative interjections. Not enough of the chorus - sung by Our Lady's Choral Society - enunciated sufficiently to make the text clear. They were, however, animated and responsive under the direction of Proinnsías Ó Duinn, who drew firm, mostly balanced orchestral support.
MICHAEL DUNGAN