Irish Timescritics review Gheorghiu and the RTÉ NSO at the NCH and Compagnia Zappalà Danza at the Civic Theatre in Tallaght
Gheorghiu, RTÉ NSO/Marin
NCH, Dublin
Romanian megastar soprano Angela Gheorghiu made her long-awaited Dublin debut at the National Concert Hall on Monday. The programme (which the NCH managed to get wrong in detail both in the printed programme and in the insert circulated as a correction) was clearly planned as a kind of elaborate crescendo.
It's an old habit of singers to begin with a bit of baroque, numbers that are quaintly called arie antiche and treated as something between a warm-up and a respectful gesture to a kind of music we don't take that seriously any more. Some of us do, of course. But many of the stars - and even more of their imitators - actually don't.
Gheorghiu gave Giordani's Caro mio ben and Handel's Lascia ch'io pianga the kind of treatment where you can revel in the glorious, liquid tone but struggle to discern the true shape of melodic lines. Thereafter the singer concentrated on what she does rather better, standard arias from Bizet to Puccini.
It is all of 17 years since Gheorghiu last performed in Ireland, as a fresh-voiced young singer in a recital at the Wexford Festival. Then, her singing seemed natural and unmannered. Now it is the patina of wisdom, the artifice born of experience and effort that are most obvious. And there's an ease throughout the range which can give a touch of turbo-projection at the lower end, as well as the greatly appreciated freedom of her high notes. She tackled Bizet's Carmen with a sometimes smoky-toned gutsiness, and brightened the audience's evening with every gorgeous high note from her selection of verismo arias.
She saved her best till last, mining Un bel di vedremo from Puccini's Madama Butterfly for the passion and pathos of the abandoned Cio-Cio-San, for whom she found an appropriate fullness of expression that hadn't gelled to quite the same extent in anything earlier in the evening.
The conductor, Ion Marin, got some luscious sounds from the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, and added some orchestral items that had a sense of musical point not always to be found in the singing, including a full-blooded Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet and a Mozart Marriage of Figaro overture that was full of pzazz.
Michael Dervan
Compagnia Zappalà Danza
Civic Theatre, Tallaght
Choreographer Roberto Zappalà set out his stall from the first moment of Solo, Duo, Trio, a programme of three works from his company's repertoire. Appearing alone onstage in casual black and clip-on microphone, his bearded face looked puzzled as he stared us down and then, suddenly, with a leap and a whimper, he uncoiled into a stream of verbal and physical gibberish. Once the audience's giggles had subsided, it became clear that, however playful the presentation, Zappalà's ulterior motive was to forefront pure movement at the expense of gesture. Throughout the short solo - taken from a longer work - he appeared almost as a warm-up act for what was to follow.
Chopin's lush harmonic seemed an unlikely companion to Foulplay, an austere trio taken from a larger project based on Samuel Beckett, but the 13 short piano preludes served as emotional colour swatches to the relentlessly bleak movement. Beginning within dimly flashing squares of light, Daniela Bendini, Wei Meg Poon and Paola Valenti twisted their limbs and torsos in cold isolation. Marco Policastro's lighting never rose above the crepuscular, so movement earned full attention from the eye. Within this dull visual range, small changes were magnified, as in a short sequence between Bendini and Poon where they danced with the napes of their necks joined - in context, it seemed heartbreakingly touching.
Not surprising there was a more tender movement vocabulary in the Romeo e Giulietta duet. Again the visual setting was restricted, with a white performing area of just two rolls of dancefloor stretched across the stage. The emotional swings in Prokofiev's music were wider than in the Chopin, but Bendini and Poom's partnership maintained a lovestruck obliviousness to the forces acting on their doomed duet.
Zappalà has created sensuous moments, such as a duet of entangled limbs that slowly poured its way across stage and two character-defining solos whose movements contained the expressiveness of refined technique with the clarity of ordinary body language. This choreographic confidence was impressive given the temptations that lurked within the loaded history and reputation of the subject matter.
Michael Seaver
