ArtScape: The recent liaison between Northern Ireland's Castleward Opera and Cork's new company Opera 2005 raised more than a few eyebrows, writes Michael Dervan. Opera co-productions are usually undertaken between companies operating in venues with some degree of compatibility in their stage sizes. However, the disparity between the Cork Opera House and Castleward is significant.
Castleward, who staged the opera last month, perform in the wing of an historic courtyard outbuilding, with the narrow stage built out from an arch, over which the singers have to enter and exit. Forget about wings or fly towers. There's hardly enough room to swing the proverbial cat.
In spite of early indications to the contrary, the Cork performances last week ended up with two new leads, Marion Newman as Carmen and David Pomeroy as Don José, both of whom were in a different vocal league to their Castleward counterparts. There was also, of course, an enlarged set and a bigger chorus, a different orchestra and a different conductor. Costumes and general appearances apart, it felt to be a different show, with conductor Kevin Mallon (who's also Opera 2005's artistic director) levering the musical and vocal achievements onto an altogether higher level.
The question facing Opera 2005 is, of course, where can it go after the European City of Culture fillip provided by funding from Cork 2005? It's going to be hard enough to raise the funds to secure the year's third production, a planned run of Rossini's Barber of Seville in November. Yet, in spite of its name, Opera 2005 would like to see itself as a long-term provider of opera in Cork.
The Arts Council, which turned down the company's application for support in its start-up year, has a pretty poor track record in the funding of opera. The history of Arts Council opera funding in the 21st century is a tale as twisted and tortured as many an opera plot. Think of the convolutions involved in keeping Opera Ireland solvent, and of the ongoing rain dance with a Wexford Festival which seems to think that public funding should come without any strings attached.
On the other hand, there are some positive indicators for the fledgling company. Its attendances have been high, 91.5 per cent for Carmen in spite of the hot weather. Kevin Mallon has given its work a distinctive musical flavour, balancing the sound between stage and pit so that no singer has to strain. And the company has also managed to put together an orchestra - again, much better than the Castleward band - in which three-quarters of the players are from or based in Cork.
The other heartening thing for Opera 2005 to think about must be the fact that back in 1986 Opera Theatre Company secured an initial Arts Council grant of IR£80,000 in advance of its first production.
Back then there was a different company in the southern capital, Cork City Opera, whose grant of IR£22,971 amounted to just 29 per cent of OTC's grant. With OTC's 2005 grant at €620,000, a pro-rata amount for Cork would now be just under €180,000.
Aristocratic audience
Good to see Brian Friel gracing the first night of Aristocrats in London, writes Bernard Adams. Down at the South Bank the crowds massed on an almost tropical evening - almost, but not quite - as if nothing had happened. The Donegal maestro was resplendent in a cream suit, and wielded rather than leant on a thick brown stick. He sat halfway back for what turned out to be an awkward but still potent production of his 1979 play on the wide - too wide - open spaces of the Lyttleton stage.
First, the awkward bit. The set was designed by the director, Tom Cairns, and is an unholy mixture of realism and high tech. A sort of grass carpet, making an appropriately unkempt lawn, sits oddly with monumental wall segments - representing the Big House occupied by a family of fallen-on-hard-times Catholic "aristocrats". And in the first act Andrew Scott plays Casimir, the most dysfunctional of the four siblings, as a virtuoso fantasist, but his occasionally inaudible monologues hold up the action (or perhaps inaction should be the word, as this is a Chekhovian piece) for too long as Friel painstakingly dissects the inhabitants of Ballybeg Hall.
However, in the second and third acts some interaction begins: Eamonn (Peter McDonald, excellent), married to the heavy-drinking Alice (Dervla Kirwan), carves up with great wit the naive cultural assumptions of the visiting US academic Tom Hoffnung (Stephen Boxer); and Gina McKee gives a moving authority to the role of Judith. Father is played by TP McKennna, regrettably just a voice offstage most of the time.
The National is having a Friel summer. In September Translations, directed by Sean Holmes, goes on tour for three months before coming to rest in London. Apparently the two Friels were not a planned tribute, although there was a feeling that it was time the NT did another one.
Translations was chosen as a piece which will play superbly in Brecon or Tunbridge Wells; the timing of Aristocrats was governed by the director's availability. And of course the Gate Theatre's The Home Place, with Tom Courtenay starring, is still running in the West End.
Have a harp
The harp is going to be the focus of unusual interest in Ireland this week, when the Ninth World Harp Congress comes to town, writes Michael Dervan. The congress's lectures, seminars, masterclasses and concert take place in UCD's Belfield campus, but the associated musical events, many of which are open to the general public, spill over into the National Concert Hall and St Patrick's Cathedral.
The opening concert, at St Patrick's on Sunday, celebrates Ireland's bardic tradition by bringing Séamus Heaney onto the platform with six players of harps old and new.
The closing concert, this day week, reunites the members of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra with a Frenchman who once played in their midst, Christian Lardé (the principal flautist more than half a century ago) and his harpist wife, Marie-Claire Jamet; they will play the Duo Concertant by Jean-Michel Damase.
The schedule organised by the Irish host committee, chaired by harpist Clíona Doris, is extremely full. It includes recitals by winners of harp competitions, and appearances by 30 young harpists in a Focus on Youth series.
There's quite an amount of new music (including specially commissioned works from Irish composers John Buckley and Michael Alcorn), as well as a strand of orchestral concerts with leading harpists as soloists. Full details of this
mammoth triennial international celebration of Ireland's national instrument can be found on www.worldharpcongress.org
Doherty takes wing
Caitlin Doherty of Waterford's Garter Lane has been appointed administrator for the new gallery of contemporary art at Lismore Castle and takes up her position in August. The inaugural exhibition at the gallery, created by the restoration of a disused wing of the riverside castle, is to run from September 3rd to October 30th.
Exhibition curator is Aileen Corkery, formerly visual arts programmer at Temple Bar, who has gathered a group of seven well-known international and Irish artists in film, photography, sculpture, print and painting for the show.
Corkery is currently developing a film programme for the Irish Museum of Modern Art and she will move to work with Hauser & Wirth in London in September.
Euro kids take the stage
On Monday, European Children's Theatre Encounter begins, and over the following fortnight Ireland's National Association for Youth Drama (NAYD) will bring 140 children involved in drama around Europe to Cork.
It's the first time the pan-European annual encounter has been held in Ireland since 1991, bringing together children in youth theatre between 12 and 14 years old, as well as drama facilitators from 15 European countries to devise and create an intercultural performance exploring how the children see themselves today and what they see as their future potential. The event closes with aspectacular finale at the end of the month with children weaving "a carnival of dreams" through the streets of Cork.
Also on a children's theatre theme, Theatretrain performing arts school (6-18 years) is running its summer spectacular from August 3rd to 14th in Blanchardstown, Knocklyon and Whitehall in Dublin.
Tel: 086-0872552 or email theatretrain@dublin.ie