. . . arguing
About Bruce Springsteen. This week's Culture Podcast began with a tribute to Clarence Clemonsbut descended into squabbling. We also talked about the future of Irish newspapers. Listen at irishtimes.com or subscribe on iTunes.
. . . counting
There are only so many literary festivalsa person can go to – unless you're a writer. There are always a few that, if you miss, you can be assured will be back around again. A quick look through the programmes of six of the year's biggest festivals shows how some will rack up the mileage this year, but who flexes their muscles in the ubiquity stakes?
. . . saying
The crux is going to be how they go about sparking the initial curiosity of their potential audience in the absence of names that are in themselves a surefire draw
Aidan Dunne, in Thursday’s Life&Culture, on the Dublin Contemporary programme
. . . going to
Pro Forma's 'electro-opera' Tomorrow, in a Year. An opera about evolution is itself a step forward in visuals and approach. It's at Cork Opera House tonight.
. . . watching ‘Rigoletto’ in Dublin
It's probably a first. The murdered daughter whom Rigoletto uncovers in a sack at the end of Matthew Richardson's new Rigolettofor Scottish Opera is in fact a wigless mannequin. And it's not the first mannequin of the evening.
The members of the male chorus are found in act I swirling around a hall in evening dress with mannequins in their embrace. And the floor of the ducal palace at the opening of act II is strewn with the discarded trunks and limbs of mannequins.
The message is clear: women are being treated as objects, on the one hand a quick source of excitement and pleasure, on the other a treasure to be kept so clean and undefiled that a quarantine from the corrupting influence of society is necessary in the case of Rigoletto’s daughter, Gilda.
Designer Jon Morrell presents Gilda’s room, with its walls of painted-on curtains, as if it hovers above and apart from the rest of the world. It’s a cocoon of blue that contrasts starkly with the brothel-red curtains (also painted on), which provide peepholes for the goings-on of the duke and his guests.
The unsubtle coding is applied to the characters, too. Eddie Wade’s Rigoletto is presented as a cheap entertainer, Claire Watkins’s Gilda has almost nunnish modesty, and Edgaras Montvidas’s predatory duke even gets a fascist greatcoat at the end.
It’s Watkins, a light-toned Gilda with gymnastic vocal reach, who most consistently hits the spot, and who also most clearly won the audience’s hearts at the Grand Canal Theatre on Tuesday. Wade’s Rigoletto is best at its extremes, when he is being the malign, barbed jester, or finds himself totally overwrought. Montvidas’s duke took some time to settle in, and ended up leaving an impression more of potential than of unblemished achievement.
The chorus work was good, but Tobias Ringborg, the conductor, seemed to be having the greatest of difficulty keeping stage and pit in tight alignment. And he often chased dramatic effects that left the music sounding strangely inadequate, as if Verdi had somehow made miscalculation after miscalculation. Michael Dervan
* Also on tonight