Verdi - La traviata (Buxton, 2026)

Giuseppe Verdi - La traviata

Buxton International Festival, 2026

Adrian Kelly, James Hurley, Alina Adamski, Tigran Melkonyan, André Heyboer, Frances Gregory, Amy J Payne, Harry Thatcher, Christopher Nairne, George Robarts, John Ieuan Jones, James Liu

Buxton Opera House - 22nd July 2026

As I mentioned in my other reviews of the festival, I was somewhat disappointed that the Buxton International Festival had made the decision to no longer perform exclusively rare opera, but times change and I accept that it's probably a commercial and economic necessity. The Buxton festival regulars are not getting any younger and new younger audiences are essential, so recognisable names like Verdi, La traviata and The Merry Widow might have a more popular appeal than something like the 1625 opera La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina (which I would note was a sell-out nonetheless). Still, there are attractions enough elsewhere in the music and book festival, in the Fringe and in the beautiful countryside of the Peak District, so I had no intention of going to see another La traviata, safe in the assurance that seats would still be filled without me. But you find you've seen all the Fringe you want to see, the legs have had all the hiking they can stand and there is an opera on with a few cheap seats left; so what is a committed opera-goer supposed to do?

I even knew what we were in for having seen the glossy productions shots. This was going to be a 'classic' traditional Belle Époque La traviata. There was one original touch, the set opening out from giant size jewellery box inspired by the one owned by Marie Duplessis, the inspiration for Alexandre Dumas' La Dame aux Camélias and the source for Verdi's Violetta Valéry in La traviata. That was the only distinguishing feature from a thousand other La traviatas. In Act I, the costumes were all formal dinner jackets and gaudy long satin dresses, lace frills and red velvet covered chairs; the set cluttered and messy.

There was nothing original in Act II either, Scene I at Violetta's country house was conventional and dull, and director James Hurley was unable to find any way of making the relationship between Violetta and Alfredo feel natural and authentic. There was little sympathy to be felt for the pleas of a lifeless Giorgio Germont who failed to provide any compelling reason why Violetta should abandon the relationship with his son. In Scene II of Act II, the gypsy girls and the matador routines - intrusive at the best of times, but definitely capable of being integrated better into the drama - also failed to excite or set up the struggle between fate and death to come in Act III.

Choosing to stage a frequently performed popular opera at Buxton is one thing, but having a good record of staging lesser-known Verdi operas in the past, I don't really know what possessed them to stage La traviata is such an unoriginal and uninspiring way. The characterisation was non-existent, the interactions lifeless, the direction going through the motions of operatic movements and mannerisms. There was not one original idea or interpretation worth anything here. Verdi had restrictions and censors to get past, so much of the underlying intent and implications about the activities of Violetta Valéry as a courtesan had to be glossed over, but there is no excuse for a director for the modern stage not bringing out the real underlying drive of Verdi's opera. When Violetta refers to herself as 'la traviata', it's even translated in the subtitles as 'lost woman', which could mean just doomed to die. With that La traviata becomes just a head-in-the-clouds impossible romance, the jealousy of a spurned lover, and a chance of happiness snatched away by terminal illness.

The remainder of the Buxton production remained bland. inoffensive and unambitious, saying nothing. La traviata deserves more and so much more can be found in this work, but there was no effort at all to be adventurous and explore the many themes within it. It doesn't need to be as radical as Andrea Breth's Salò-inspired 2012 production for La Monnaie in Brussels - but even the most recent productions I have seen of La traviata (Simon Stone for Paris in 2019 and Tatjana Gürbaca for Den Norske in 2018) before I decided I needed a sabbatical from this overly familiar opera for a few years, all had thoughtful probing ways to bring the subject of domestic abuse and public attitudes towards women who step outside accepted conventional social roles into a more recognisable modern context and thus rekindle the fire that drives the anger expressed by Verdi at the real underlying tragedy of women like Violetta Valéry.

Musically however, as familiar as La traviata is, it serves now and again to be reminded how good Verdi is in wringing the drama and truth out of every scene and emotion. This is Verdi entering into a new mature stage of his opera compositions, with the likes of Luisa Miller, Stiffelio and Rigoletto all showing a closer connection between subject matter and score, moving just a little further on past the conventions of Italian opera laid down by Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini and pushing Italian opera to new heights. Adrian Kelly, the musical director of the Buxton Festival may well have longed to conduct this Verdi opera for that reason - it's such a rich and dynamic score - and all of its qualities, pace, dynamic and rhythm were well handled, even if the stage direction suffocated any real emotion being expressed in it.

The singing also couldn't be faulted other than for the inability to make these characters feel real and not just stuffy cardboard figures going through the motions. Tigran Melkonyan was as good an Alfredo as I've heard, very much in the classic tenor mould. André Heyboer, through no fault of his own and more an issue of direction, was a dull, staid Giorgio Germont, the role sung well but unpersuasive. I was initially unsure about Alina Adamski taking on the role of Violetta for a single performance that was sung for the rest of the run by Alexandra Nowakowski. I would have liked a more mature voice and thought she started weak with some noticeable vibrato in her 'È strano! ... Ah, fors' è lui', but she shone in Act II and Act III, showing a superb range of voice and emotions for what is evidently a hugely intense and challenging role. Her 'Addio del passato' was almost heartbreaking ...almost, but not quite. This production would have needed far more build up for that devastating final scene to have impact. The closing down of the jewellery box should have been more effective, but it didn't quite cut it.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Caccini - La liberazione di Ruggiero (Buxton, 2026)

Francesca Caccini - La liberazione di Ruggiero

Vache Baroque, Buxton International Festival, 2026

Jonathan Darbourne, Eloise Lally, Camilla Seale, Jon Stainsby, Phoebe Rayner, Filippo Turkheimer, Betty Makharinsky, Harriet Burns, Aina Miyagi, Tom Kelly

Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton - 21st July 2026

The Buxton International Opera spread its wings this year, mixing up the traditional focus on rarely performed opera with a well-worn crowd-pleaser (La traviata) and an operetta (The Merry Widow). It was not a welcome development for my part - personally, I wouldn't take the trouble of flying over from Ireland just to see another La traviata (and yet I went anyway!)- but the regular Buxton attendees aren't getting any younger and there is undoubtedly the necessity of attracting a younger audience that might never have seen the classics. There were however still some rare gems worth that made a visit to the festival worthwhile, such as an inventive take on Handel's Amidigi di Gaula and an incredible opportunity to be taken back and see life breathed into a piece of opera history with Francesca Caccini's early opera La liberazione di Ruggiero.

Composed in 1625, the first opera to be composed by a woman, they don't come much more obscure than La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina. It's a rarely performed and not many would ever have had the opportunity or pleasure of seeing this 400 year old work staged. The quality of the work is beyond question, the challenge rather that it needs to be played by musicians specialising in early opera and in the playing of the instruments of the period. That would be someone like Vache Baroque and having seen their excellent production of Charpentier's unfinished 1687 chamber opera La descente d’Orphée aux enfers at Buxton last year, you could be certain that Caccini's only surviving opera was in safe and experienced hands. Front seat booked for this one.

La liberazione di Ruggiero is indeed a very rare opera, but I have seen it performed before in a production presented by Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Lir Academy of Dramatic Art in 2019 at the Abbey Peacock Theatre in Dublin. My review of that production covers the history of the piece, its qualities and the influence Caccini's work may have had; possibly just as important to the development of opera as Monteverdi. Historical importance aside, it's simply just a beautiful work in how the arrangements of baroque instrumentation work their magic musically and harmonically and in how Caccini chooses to tell the familiar story of the enchantress Alcina and her magical powers, keeping  Ruggiero captive in her twisted garden of discarded lovers who have been corrupted into living plants.

I've seen La liberazione di Ruggiero described as a comic opera - and indeed the 2019 Dublin production retained that element of the opera in their production - but evidently there are any number of ways that a director can reinterpret and reflect the work from a modern perspective. In contrast to how Handel's take on the legends around Orlando Furioso were successfully re-interpreted with more of a comic touch his Amidigi di Gaula at this year's Buxton Festival, director Eloise Lally and the Vache Baroque find a rather darker undercurrent running through Caccini's opera and chose to focus on that instead. That's one of the marvels of being able to see such works side-by-side at a festival such as this, seeing rare early works of opera treated with respect and with the intent to present their themes to a contemporary audience.

Without having to get too revisionist about it, it's clear from the fact that the opera was written by a woman - no less than the first ever opera written by a female composer - that she brings and places a distinctly feminine aspect on the work, with two women in powerful roles as sorceresses - Melissa and Alcina. They are not just opposing forces who use their power for good or for evil - or a least they don't have to be seen that way, and Eloise Lally's interpretation did provide a little more sympathy for Alcina. She may have turned her lovers into twisted trees and plants, but she was acting out of love, however misguided.

Without it having to be over-emphasised (although the programme synopsis does situate this version in the near future or "somewhere between the present and the future: a world ravaged by war") you could also see the dark world as one ravaged by an eco-disaster, war devastation, climate change that has destroyed nature, twisted it and corrupted the inhabitants of the planet. You could even see the magic of the sorceresses as the work of mad science creating destructive weapons, but the production leaves the work open to let such notions arise naturally out of the situation and have resonance in how they relate to the problems in the world that we are familiar with today. 

There isn't a considerable amount of dramatic action in La liberazione di Ruggiero, as is the case with nearly all early and baroque opera, but it has moments of exquisite beauty in how the situations lend themselves to be presented and those situations and expression are enlivened by the musical arrangements and the urgency of the singing. Those in turn are made magical by the vocal harmonies and the musical dissonance or less familiar sounds of the harpsichord (played by musical director Jonathan Darbourne), viola da gamba and theorbo - not to mention the alto, tenor and bass 'sackbuts', which are early trombones.

Needless to say, it all sounded incredible, particularly in the arrangement of the orchestra to the left and right of the stage, providing an enveloping musical environment for those of us in the stalls - the main continuo and accompaniment played to the right of the stage supplemented by triumphal and ominous blasts of the sackbuts and additional recorders on the left of the stalls. The surround musical performance adds another dimension to the performance of this opera, drawing you into the island with sweet sounds and persuasive rhythms that beguile and entrap.

It looked and sounded magnificent, a rare treat and a pleasure to be able to get close to and hear a work performed to such a high standard, aiming towards a fresh interpretation while retaining authenticity of the original instrumentation and character. Those are qualities are brought out in the superb stage production with fine singers with the perfect sweet voices necessary for this. Jon Stainsby in particular was strong and resonant as Ruggiero, tormented by Camilla Seale's darkly brooding Alcina and revived by Phoebe Rayner's lighter voiced Melissa - their voices suited to the nature of the roles. Harriet Burns, Betty Makharinsky and Aina Miyagi had a variety of lyrical roles that blended beautifully with the score. Here's hoping Vache Baroque return to the Buxton Festival soon.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Handel - Amadigi di Gaula (Buxton, 2026)

George Frideric Handel - Amadigi di Gaula

Buxton International Festival, 2026

Erin Helyard, Olivia Fuchs, Timothy Morgan, Rowan Pierce, Hilary Cronin, James Hall

Buxton Opera House - 20th July 2026

He was a bit of a genius, this George Frideric Handel. I realise I'm not making any startlingly original observations there but having seen it at this year's Buxton International Festival's production it seems that in Amadigi di Gaula - and quite a few other Handel operas apparently - he was the originator of the game show concept of Love Island and The Bachelor, or at the very least he anticipated their existence 300 years before the event! Ok, that is perhaps not the greatest claim for the genius of the composer, but what the Buxton Festival production did was show that Handel was certainly in tune with the public's taste for highly charged (and contrived) romance and love drama entertainments. The real cleverness of the production however is in how it shows that Handel's opera seria music - which could potentially come across as quite dry and stuffy - actually has a great sense of fun.

In which case it's the director Olivia Fuchs who is perhaps the real genius here in recognising or finding a way that makes the hothouse love entanglements of figures in a magical fantasy actually relate to something we are familiar with - or at least can recognise - in the modern world, and translate those high-flown melodramatic sentiments into something that still has meaning and relevance to a modern audience. Instead of viewing it in its 18th century incarnation of a Paladin and the Prince of Thrace both being enamoured with the daughter of the King of the Fortunate Isles while a sorceress concocts spells to win the Paladin for herself, the director sets the opera as a reality game show on 'Melissa's Island' where the competition is played out, the contestants undertaking hazardous tasks to find out who is worthy of true love.

There is no sense of any half measure here: director Olivia Fuchs and set designer Eleanor Bull go all out to set the drama as a Love Island TV game show and it works so perfectly you would think that it was written to be presented this way. OK, I don't think those competing for the affections of prospective partners on Love Island threaten to kill themselves and each other quite as often as they do in Handel's Amidigi di Gaula, but as I haven't actually watched any of the reality game shows it is based on, I couldn't say for sure. I have seen newspaper reports of fatalities and contestants suffering serious consequences following their appearances on these shows, so Handel or his librettist (who has not been positively identified as far as I know) may even have been aware of the stakes involved in such public displays of affection and rejection.

But then it's long been a feature of opera - and apparently in life before opera if one can imagine such barbaric times - that love cuts deep. The contestants here on Melissa's Island, or the noble lords and ladies in Amadigi di Gaula if you prefer, are young and headstrong, self-absorbed and beautiful, and presumably used to lovers falling at their fee; yet errors of judgement and misfortunate timing all conspire to make the choice of an ideal romantic partner a lot more difficult than it ought to be. The Buxton production brings out this character brilliantly during the overture, Melissa the hostess/sorceress inviting a line-up of contestants onto the stage, each full of themselves and confident of their charms, leaving us with only the host and the three finalists to get the right partners for each other.

The production is more than just a clever eye-popping set design or clever conceit imposed on Handel. The direction is superb, the figures never resorting to just standing facing the audience and working their way through da capo arias. The four lovers are given some measure of personality and thus a degree of sympathy, without ever getting too deep or serious. I say that but there are deep emotions of all kinds, laments, joyful rhythms and dances and the director makes sure that none of them are just left to go to waste, giving the singers room to express themselves with in it.

Whatever you think of the production - and everyone I spoke to or heard speak about it loved it - at the heart of it all is the music of Handel which explores the range of all those emotions. You would think that the opera seria format and the delivery of da capo arias might be restrictive, that Handel's musical style is a little too elegant and artificial to be matched with a bright modern set, modern attitudes and quite a few added comic touches and nods to the audience, but in reality the artificiality of the setup perfectly matches the artificiality of the contrived idealistic views of the lover/contestants: all of it contrived of course to delight and entertain an audience.

Handel's opera was indeed a great success when it premiered in London in 1715, the composer proving that he had his finger on the pulse of what the public wanted following the success of his first Italian opera in London, Rinaldo (1711), also drawn from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso; Amadigi's original production even employing some spectacular magic effects of its own for the delight of its audience. And indeed, the composer would go on to write quite a few more successful magic operas (or further seasons of Love Island if you like) in Orlando (1733), Ariodante (1735) and Alcina (1735), all likewise drawn from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. I suspect that the way it was presented 300 years ago might not have quite the same impact today, so it is entirely right that the Buxton production should do the same for a modern audience.

With the English Consort orchestra conducted by Erin Helyard, the performance did justice to Handel's score, employing theorbo, recorder and harpsichord without it ever feeling like this was 'old music'. That's a credit to the production as a whole, the music working perfectly with the tone of the comedy and sincerity of the sentiments expressed and played out on the stage. The singing and the dramatic performances were all excellent. One of the benefits of this work is that with only four characters, the love complications are not overly complicated - or need not be as complicated as these figures make it - and each character - all equally deserving of love - get the opportunity to express their feelings in beautiful arias.

Melissa of course the most interesting figure as the sorceress; the schemer, plotting and creating drama, the role was wonderfully sung by Hilary Cronin - who sang in another Handel four-hander Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno in Buxton in 2024 - supplying plenty of character. Timothy Morgan, taking on the role at short notice was a headstrong Amadigi, the character's easy going charm not quite as easy to relate to, but the countertenor played the role with smooth confidence. Rowan Pierce was a bright Oriana and James Hall an impetuous Dardano; more than just love interest secondary characters, they have a vital role to play in their struggle to assert themselves against these powerful forces that would direct their lives in another direction from their hearts. Musically this hit all the right points, the strings striking a dance to the beat of life, the oboe and recorder woodwinds capturing the lyricism of the emotions in this revitalising interpretation of a delightful Handel opera.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Tchaikovsky - The Maid of Orleans (Amsterdam, 2025)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - The Maid of Orleans

Dutch National Opera, 2025

Valentin Uryupin, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Elena Stikhina, Allan Clayton, Nadezhda Pavlova, Vladislav Sulimsky, Andrey Zhilikhovsky, John Relyea, Oleksiy Palchykov, Gábor Bretz, Patrick Guetti, Eva Rae Martinez, Tigran Matinyan

ARTE Concert

It may have inspired at least one of the greatest films ever made, but Joan of Arc is a problematic work for an opera, at least as far as Verdi and Tchaikovsky are concerned. The focus on the spiritual side of Joan of Arc, the strength of her inner light and purpose and use her determination to inspire others is perhaps what makes Dryer's The Passion of Joan of Arc and Bresson's The Trial of Joan of Arc deeply moving. Opera, particularly in this period (Verdi's Giovanno d'Arco in 1845, Tchaikovsky's in 1879), demanded a little more conventional romance and drama built into the exigencies of wartime duty. That's not to say that the spiritual side of the story is neglected, but can get overwhelmed by the roar of battle cries. Or at least that's been my experience of those rarely performed works.

Dmitri Tcherniakov, controversial in his manner of often reworking or twisting original scenarios to suit his own vision for them but in my opinion infallible when it comes to drawing the inner essence out of great Russian operas, can hardly be faulted then for attempting to 'fix' Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans. Typically he sets this production far from its historical 15th century battlefield, but not only that, to further downplay any idea of war heroism, he already has Joan placed under arrest and on trial at the start of the opera. In Act I that successfully straddles the line between courtroom and town hall meeting, where Joan's refusal to behave as she is expected to do as a young woman and submit to marriage is already a crime laid against her, the events leading to it then viewed as scenes in flashback.

Seven weeks into her trial, some of the town folk are getting frustrated with the young woman's deranged visions, but with war threatening Orléans, fear takes hold and the sense of grace that exudes from the charismatic Joan is nonetheless seductive, bringing hope. Opera has the advantage here of being able to convey that characteristic in the voice (although the lack of a speaking voice certainly did not detract from Carl Th. Dreyer's 1928 silent movie masterpiece). Inevitably messing with time lines and locations in Tcherniakov's version causes some misalignment with the opera plot, but rightly the intent is not to make the slightly ludicrous or at least unfashionable dated dramatic historical action credible, but rather to serve to bring out the deeper spiritual side of the work.

Spiritual maybe, but as he has made plain in everything from Dialogues des Carmélites to Parsifal, Tcherniakov is not going to depict any of Joan's visions in terms of religious or quasi-religious mysticism, but from a profoundly humanistic viewpoint. Which does not mean idealistic either, particularly in this case where the outcome of those deep convictions lean towards fighting and killing. Joan receives her messages from the lights above the fans in the town hall/courtroom, rather than any celestial visitation. There is no time either for earnest stilted declamation (or subtitles), which I thought undermined this work the last time I viewed it, and accordingly characters here are seen behaving irreverently or mockingly whenever it occurs. The long scene between King Charles VII and Agnes Sorel works partly due to this but credit must also be given to the singing performances of Allan Clayton and Nadezhda Pavlova, who are outstanding here. That's also a measure of good direction, subverting pomposity without undermining the work, just shifting the focus towards the work's real strengths and the purpose which is to highlight the experience and fate of Joan subjected to the judgement of her society.

The same applies to Tchaikovsky's roaring choruses and bombastic score which, as I observed before, is somewhat over the top in his vaunting the nationalistic heroism of warriors, but when turned inward it can be very powerful indeed, and it is well directed towards that in Valentin Uryupin's conducting of the Netherlands Philharmonic. It's not entirely possible to eliminate the jingoism in the libretto, but Tcherniakov never lets that side of the declamations dominate. Evidently, taking it out of the historical period and adopting a more modern perspective on the actions of the state helps make that case; the abuse of the prevailing religious and political establishment is more recognisable in this context and it hits all the harder for it. Even Joan's glorious acclaim from the people is subverted here, seen as nothing more than a hallucination of her own fevered mind having been locked up and abused in a prison cell. Aligned with Tchaikovsky's music it's incredibly powerful, setting up the underlying tragedy of the young woman's treatment in the run up to the dramatic conclusion. 

If you were to take the opera's libretto and setting literally as the historical Joan of Arc, you would have to think that Joan's divinity or position as a national hero and feminist is compromised here in Tcherniakov's vision. She becomes a tool, her mental illness (the titles above the stage clearly indicating that these are "hallucinations") turning towards religious fervour and used as a way of controlling the war narrative, leading the people to killing and death for the benefit of the ruling powers. But whatever perspective you want to place on her legacy, it's not the historical Joan that is of interest to Tcherniakov, but her underlying humanity and her mistreatment at their hands of the authorities. The DNO production uses Tchaikovsky’s operatic version of Friedrich Schiller's dramatic account, whose adherence to historical facts is hardly the most accurate account (nor meant to be), as a way of bringing all those forces together, showing how they work and how they use people for their own ends.

There are no real surprises there as far as the look, feel and outlook of a typical Dmitri Tcherniakov interpretation of an operatic work, which for all its apparent divergence from the original intent, supports the music, brings the opera up to date and indeed validates its deeper truths. What stands out then are indeed those musical qualities of Tchaikovsky at full tilt, yet maintaining those familiar lyrical qualities and tragic elements more familiar from Eugene Onegin, Iolanta (both of which Tcherniakov has directed) and The Queen of Spades; lyrical qualities that particularly when sung with authentic Russian voices can be very impressive. All the cast are excellent in that regard, but Elena Stikhina as Joan is hugely impressive, giving a breathtaking, committed performance that rises to the occasion, holding you captivated through the young woman's glory and torment as much as Falconetti did when she immortalised Joan of Arc in Dreyer's film version. High praise indeed.

Links: Dutch National Opera, ARTE Concert

Coming Together - Louth Contemporary Music Society (Dundalk, 2026)

Louth Contemporary Music Society - Coming Together

LCMS, Dundalk 2026

Canti della tenebra - Beat Furrer
Litanei - Beat Furrer
Coming Together - Frederic Rzewski
 
String Trio - Jürg Frey

in mia vita da vuolp - Beat Furrer
Lotófagos - Beat Furrer
Prophezeiungen - Beat Furrer

Ten Lyrics of Li Po - Harry Partch
U.S. Highball - Harry Partch

Davóne Tines: Recital No. 1 - Mass

Dundalk - 19th and 20th June 2026

The persistent rain stopped and the skies cleared a few hours before the opening evening concert of the first day of the 2026 Louth Contemporary Music Society festival. Now in its 20th year, this year's programme was entitled Coming Together and the LCMS's midsummer celebration of new music brought together many regular attendees under the June sun in Dundalk, Co. Louth, including the seagulls who added their customary background lament. The unique conditions of this setting - something that makes this festival of new music unlike any other - were reflected in the programming for the opening concert at St. Nicholas' Church of three pieces that alone almost constitute a mini-festival. It certainly pointed to the variety and the adventurous direction that the festival would take in the following full day of concerts; a format that is characteristic of the festival, the programme constantly surprising and delighting, yet retaining a clear coherent unity, never feeling like it is just a collection of pieces thrown randomly together.

The principal guest composer this year was Swiss-born Austrian composer Beat Furrer who has such a variety of work that you could build a festival around his compositions work alone. Furrer, in my opinion (as principally an opera reviewer) excels in vocal pieces and while we didn't get one of his full scale operas at the LCMS festival, the works chosen for the programme proved to be extraordinarily rich in musical, lyrical and even dramatic content. Furrer's astonishing choral work Enigmas featured in last year's festival Echoes, and the qualities of that work were reflected in the two pieces for solo voices on the opening night. Based on a work by the Italian poet Dino Campania (1885-1932), Canti della tenebra for contralto and piano (Cornelia Sonnleithner the contralto, Mary Dullea on piano) immediately grabbed your attention, the mood of the piece melancholic and reflective of someone unmoored on a journey. The musical setting reflected and deepened the meaning - something that would be a feature of the rest of the festival selections - drawing you in and inviting you to feel and connect with the underlying sentiments.

Furrer also gifted us with a remarkable new piece commissioned by LCMS, Litanei for soprano, clarinet & string quartet. It was perhaps not so easy to relate to the emotional content, but the effect of the manner in which the fragments of the poems were assembled and presented was extraordinary. Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-77) and Gaspara Stampa (1523-54) are separated by centuries and language but weaved together their words don't so much intensify their respective agony as much as support each other through the pain. Furrer conducted the ensemble with a very tight rein through the precise, short sharp jagged expressions of intense hurt fired out in the voice and in the instruments ("crushed… skewered…between the pages of the book…reality murdered") were wreathed in short gaps of silence to let them resonate, before building in intensity. Elina Viluma-Helling unveiled some stark emotional trauma that you might not want to feel so viscerally, but for the listener - for this one anyway - it was utterly gripping. You could feel yourself tensing, but somehow the musical development managed to find a release for all the pent-up emotions across its short but intense journey. Utterly breathtaking.

In a way that is typical of the programming - and reflected at greater length across Day 2 - Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together couldn't have been more different in its musical treatment and yet in a way it was complementary to the Furrer pieces and even an ideal way of further coming down from them. The work is based on a letter written in 1971 by Sam Melville, a prisoner in Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York, in the same year that Melville was later involved in the prison riots demanding basic human rights that saw forty-three inmates and guards killed, including Melville himself. Rzewski's setting of the words is a celebrated piece, very much in the minimalist tradition of Terry Riley’s In C, but it has features that also have echoes to other works seen at the LCMS in previous years such as Gavin Briers' Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet and Robert Ashley in the Lovely Music programme, using conversational or found text with an enigmatic expression that is explored through rhythmic propulsion and repetition.

As delivered by Daisy Press and the ensemble, Rzewski’s Coming Together was just as fascinating and thoughtful the compelling exploration of words in the Furrer pieces, but approached from a totally different angle. Like In C the instruments are not predetermined, but the rising and falling interactive dynamic is an essential scored element and Daisy Press was expressive in exploring the words and communicative in how she put them across, not least in the enigmatic repetition of the line "I think the combination of age and the greater coming together is responsible for the speed of the passing time." Giving this year's festival its title, there are plenty of other opportunities in the remaining Day 2 programme to reflect on that idea of a "greater coming together", but the programme on the opening night concert alone provided a rich musical assemblage of its own.

In as much as any musical piece is - and it was the only purely musical piece in this year's programme - Jürg Frey’s String Trio is a work that locates you in space and time: slowness of time, each note measured out, the performance venue playing a vital role in the uniqueness of the piece. This would sound and feel quite different in Frey's home place of inspiration in the Swiss Alps, it might have sounded different indeed even in Dundalk in another venue like the chapel of St Vincent's but in the former jail of the Oriel Centre, it had perhaps a more melancholy and reflective tone. You could even see a kind of 'coming together' forming already in the festival's programming, the previous evening ending with a piece that was informed by the writing of a prisoner in a jail adding an unexpected resonance to work. Rather than a lament however it felt more like welcoming music, drawing you and the audience back in together, and running to around 47- minutes long, providing something of an endurance test to prep you for the day ahead. Ultimately however the String Trio was rewarding in its slow development and progression, the subtle brush of a bow, the holding on a sustained note, the off-centre changes and interactions of Darragh Morgan (violin), Danusha Waskiewicz (viola) and Jakob Kullberg (cello), and the intimacy and acoustics of the Dundalk Gaol enough to hold you rapt and attentive.

In his introduction to his three pieces performed at St Vincent's Chapel, in mia vita da vuolp (in my life as a wolf, 2019), Lotófagos (The Lotus Eaters, 2006) and Prophezeiungen (Prophesies, 2023), Beat Furrer talked about voice, language, the inspiration of the poems that they are written around, and how there is a need to feel them deeply in order to write music for them. The pieces all accordingly have different combinations of singer and instrumentation; in mia vita da vuolp for soprano and baritone saxophone, Lotófagos for soprano and double bass, Prophezeiungen for alto, contrabass clarinet and accordion. Two of the pieces have opera connections, Lotófagos incorporated into the Furrer opera Wüstenbuch (2010), Prophezeiungen written in preparation for the opera Das grosse Feuer (2025), and performed by musicians and singers of the astonishingly virtuosic Cantando Admont vocal ensemble they were accordingly fully dramatic in expression, from the lowest of whispers to the most piercing of shrieks, from rapid recital of text to slowest drawing out of words.

Testing voice and instruments to their limits, soprano Elina Viluma-Helling and baritone saxophonist Gerald Preinfalk swooped and howled though in mia vita da vuolp; double bass player Nikolaus Feinig was bent over at a 90° angle for most of the 10 minutes of high bass notes of Lotófagos in a battle to draw full expression out of the setting of the Spanish text scored in a dauntingly challenging range that was met by soprano Giulia Zaniboni. The combination of voice and instruments of these two pieces produced some incredible sound worlds, but the most striking and unusual was evident in Prophezeiungen, the contrabass clarinet of Marco Sala and accordion of Krassimir Sterev creating unearthly sounds that wove through the astonishing vocal delivery of alto Helena Sorokina. It was a charged pin-you-back-into-your-pew performance of all three pieces, finding incredible musicality even at the most extreme limits of sound, voice and music, but always in service to the vivid imagery of the texts.

Ostensibly having little in common with the other concerts, Harry Partch fits into this programme much more easily than you would think, which is of course one of the wonders of the programming of the LCMS, which always looks for something a little more outside the box for its event at the Spirit Store venue. Creating his own self-made custom instruments, composing in just intonation, new music doesn't get much more experimental than the truly unique and inimitable compositions of the American iconoclast Harry Partch, very much an outsider in life and work compared to the European modernists of the early 20th century. What the music also has in common with the other pieces in the LCMS programme however is the distinctive nature of the writing for the voice, Partch adopting just intonation precisely for a more natural expression of the spoken voice. 

We got a broad view of Partch's work from his earliest work in his new experimental style in Ten Lyrics of Li Po, Luke Fitzpatrick playing Partch's customised viola with a cello neck studded with little metal frets described as 'brads' in the programme notes. U.S. Highball however felt more authentic Partch, recounting his own lived experience as a hobo hopping trains across America, authentic also in its record of those whose company and adventures he shared, having tremendous value for that alone. Using an adapted fretless guitar, its notes and sounds played out on raised strings with picks on right hand and bottleneck slides on the left fingers, the whole piece as Charles Corey notes (and plays) "captures the relentless energy of freight trains barrelling down mountainsides".

You don't usually get an opera singer doing a recital at the LCMS, but even when it looks like that is what has been programmed for the final evening concert of the festival, you can be sure it won't be any regular recital. Davóne Tines is however definitely a big name American bass-baritone in the opera world. I saw him in Amsterdam ten years ago when he made his first significant international appearance for the premiere of Kaija Saariaho's Only The Sound Remains at the DNO, and he has taken notable roles in premieres of John Adams' Girls of the Golden West and Terence Blanchard's powerful Fire Shut Up in My Bones, all indicating that Tines works outside the standard repertoire and very much in the sphere of new music. His Recital No. 1 - Mass then is indeed not just the regular programme of songs removed from their original context, but rather pieces selected and arranged to form a new context; a modern mass, so to speak, given appropriately in the St. Nicholas' Church of Ireland in Dundalk. And in that respect, it's also very much in this year's programme of finding creative and imaginative ways of interpreting words and finding a way to bring out other deeper personal meanings and ideas.

On paper Recital No. 1 - Mass is an eclectic mix; Handel and Bach side-by-side with Caroline Shaw and Julius Epstein, with spirituals arranged by Tyshawn Sorey, better known to me as a virtuoso jazz drummer but also pianist and composer. Conceptually however Tines had the whole recital perfectly arranged and measured and the voice to carry it off, accompanied only by the piano of John Bitoy. Bach's Mache dich, mein Herze, rein and the spirituals in particular were quite movingly sung and played, the church (or heavens) even playing its part in the evening by beaming a ray of the setting sun through the front windows of the church down to the altar to light up a ferocious delivery of Moses Hogan’s Give me Jesus. It's this kind of unpredictable and unprogrammable moment that you get more often than you would imagine at the LCMS and it's the kind of thing that makes the LCMS truly special. Whether the US bass-baritone succeeded in his aim of creating a queered mass or touching on something spiritually transcendental, Tines certainly made a case for the negro slave spirituals being as equally close to the love of God as Bach's celestial music, bringing humanity to the divinity. Somehow that seemed to be the perfect summation to the coming together of all the adventurous, surprising and uplifting music presented in this year's LCMS programme.

External links: Louth Contemporary Music Society

Wilson - Adam's Rib / Nono - Das atmende Klarsein (Dublin, 2026)

Wilson - Adam's Rib / Luigi Nono - Das atmende Klarsein

Dublin International Chamber Music Festival, 2026

Bernie Sherlock, Lina Andronovska, David Stalling, New Dublin Voices

Chapel Royal, Dublin Castle - 5th June 2026

Composing a work for the same distinctive instrumentation as one of the great works from Nono's late period and having it performed in its world premiere performance at the Dublin International Chamber Music Festival side-by-side in a way that invites comparison could not be something any modern composer would undertake lightly. While there are inevitably sonic and conceptual similarities between it and Nono's Das atmende Klarsein, Ian Wilson's latest work Adam's Rib nonetheless has a quality of its own that bears the comparison well.

From the wordless Orpheus descending into the Underworld in Orpheus Down to his latest work available on CD Lost Voices that explored the theme in various contexts, the use of voices, silence and the space in between them has been a significant feature of Ian Wilson's recent work. Another familiar feature has been the use of the texts of the Serbian poet Draginja Adamović and - much like Nono's use of Rainer Maria Rilke texts for Das atemende Klarsein - the vivid imagery found in those poems is the inspiration for musical exploration that relies to a large extent on the human voice to bring it to life.

Inevitably, Wilson's arrangements are different to Nono's in respect of how they relate to the texts and their imagery. Described in the programme notes as "dreamlike poems [that] inhabit a world of shifting realities, elemental imagery and fragile transformation", the composition fully reflects this shifting reality, using the bass flute to interact with the text and underline its expression, playing on the ambiguity within its contrasts ("Eve holds a flower in her hands/More beautiful than death") to suggest that even within horrific experiences, there is always the hope of truth and beauty gaining supremacy. It's very much in line with the composer's journey of Orpheus and the experiences recounted in Lost Voices.

Unlike Das atmende Klarsein, where the flute, tape and live electronic manipulation play out separately from the sung text allowing for response and reflection, Wilson uses the bass flute to play alongside the sung text. In the venue of the Chapel Royal at Dublin Castle, the texts in Adam's Rib were more clearly audible and not just for being translated into English, as Nono attenuates words and phrases almost beyond audible sound towards dying breaths. Flautist Lina Andonovska - a musician who has clearly been another source of inspiration for the composer, someone capable of fully exploring the shifting realities and marshalling forces behind them - moves between soft accompaniment to the sung voices to occasional jabs towards the vivid imagery expressed in them, the two finding a joint moment of almost ecstatic revelation in the fourth section where "The deepest light/Flooded me with its radiance". But if there is any sense of rediscovery of "I Who again Am I", it has clear that it has come from out of a very dark place.

It's in that sense that Wilson's Adam's Rib reflects and contrasts with Nono’s Das atmende Klarsein. While I wouldn't call the piece a radical departure from the great Italian avant-garde composer's previous works, or even a refinement, there is nonetheless a sense of the composer exploring new possibilities in sound, in the voice, in the use of the words; one that would lead towards his late masterpiece, the momentous Prometeo. Using poetic fragments from the Seventh Duino Elegy written by Rainer Maria Rilke, along with fragments from political and Greek funerary inscriptions, it explores that moment of "breathing clarity" that comes after a thunderstorm "nach spätem Gewitter, das atmende Klarsein". It also strives in its choice of musical and vocal resources to touch on that moment of radiant revelation expressed in the extraordinary text, nature itself providing the inspiration for the drive and focus of the music, the piece ending with the words "Aus Dunkel steigt ein buntes Offenbares" ("Out of darkness rises something radiant").

The piece itself feels like it is delving into those words and letting them hang there to be contemplated for their meaning as well as their sound, the work - particularly in live performance - still holding the capacity for expression of tremendous tension and release. The use of space around it is also embraced, in the acoustics of the venue that naturally disperse the range of the voices, as well as in how the bass flute is enhanced through electronics and sound projection controlled here by David Stalling. The voices disappear, almost seeming to dissolve into the ether, the texts - at times scarcely decipherable - no longer mere words but actions, their resonance taken up by flute and electronics and dispersed around the auditorium. The voices return again to take up the train of thought, restate their place, holding, sustaining, straining to expand out "into the open". 

If there were electronics for spatial dispersion used in Adam's Rib, they were less evident and more gently introduced, whereas in Das atemende Klarsein they a have a more vital role to play in the dynamic of the 40-minute piece. As does every part really. If I wasn't already familiar with the flute playing of Lina Andonovska from other works composed for her by Ian Wilson, I would have been astonished at her playing here pushed to a new level by Nono's extraordinary piece. The New Dublin Voices conducted by Bernie Sherlock have an equally challenging dynamic that explores the subtleties of the words in the articulation of the words and the breath that surrounds them. With David Stallings live electronics, all of this is a reminder that works like these can only truly be heard and felt in performance, breathing the same air as them, echoing and reverberating in a thrilling and evolving way. Even more so in the location of the Chapel Royal of Dublin Castle, an ideal venue for the performance of both works.

External links: Dublin International Chamber Music Festival

Bellini - Norma (Wexford, 2026)

Vincenzo Bellini - Norma

Irish National Opera, 2026

Maurizio Benini, Orpha Phelan, Salome Jicia, Mario Chang, Siobhan Stagg, William Guanbo Su, Aaron O'Hare, Leanne Fitzgerald

O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 3rd June 2026

Directing a bel canto opera is always going to be a challenge, but the history and origin of Bellini’s Norma makes it a little more difficult than most. The opera is not short on high emotional drama, but the shape and tone of the work is tied to its composition in 1831 as a star vehicle for the talents of the leading soprano of the time, Giuditta Pasta following on the success of her La sonnambula at La Scala earlier in the same year. Directing Norma for the Irish National Opera, Orpha Phelan however is unable to do little more than update the drama away from its largely static setting of Gaul during the Roman occupation (100-50BC) and make sure it avoids druidic processional mannerisms, but in a work that is dominated by its famous aria 'Casta Diva' and a plot that amounts to little more than a romantic love triangle melodrama, the opera still feels mired in the past and as little more than a star vehicle for the dramatic soprano. Sometimes however that can be more than enough, and that proved to be the case with the INO production, where they were fortunate enough to have an outstanding soprano in the leading role who was more than capable meeting the challenges.

If it's hard to make Norma feel relevant and feel like it has something to say that relates in any meaningful way to contemporary concerns - who doesn't know what it's like to be in a disintegrating love affair with a general from an occupying enemy force? - Bellini's writing for the opera at least makes it feel like the life and death of thousands depend on the outcome of Norma's actions. I'm being facetious of course, but there is a Medea-like dilemma in the work where Norma's children are caught in the crossfire and that is something that is touched upon deeply in the opera, if not quite to the same level of horror as Greek mythology. Orpha Phelan rightly doesn't let the work get bogged down in a historical period that has little relevance to the dramatic action, and instead depicts it in a post-apocalyptic setting to presumably enhance the idea of this being a matter of life, death and survival against overwhelming forces.

The term post-apocalyptic used to mean to mean a future dystopia, but the dull heavy clothing and makeshift living conditions out of ruins and rubble now looks like an all too familiar scene in parts of the Middle East and Eastern Europe. If there is any suggestion of such a comparison, it's not explicitly stated - and perhaps doesn't need to be - but if it is the intent to make it look like something we can relate to more easily and more deeply than ancient Gaul, the production succeeds on that level, even if it doesn't really make any greater statement about the state of contemporary world affairs. There is a nod however to the Roman period where Pollione and Flavio have red tinted Mohican haircuts, which I found a bit silly. 

The setting itself is however the least important part of Norma. I'm no fan of original period settings as they can make the opera seem stuffy and old hat, but I'm not sure that it would have made any difference here, as the real challenge the director faces is that there is not a lot of actual drama or movement in Norma. It's all sung emotional turmoil, and Phelan works with the expression of it in the music and does what she can with it, particularly in the overture which is used to show the pain and the human cost of war (something this director also did in an RNCM production of Owen Wingrave in Manchester last year). I would have loved if the INO had been able to find a way to make the opera feel a little more meaningful and contemporary, but Norma is what it is and you have to work with what you've got. Any attempt to manipulate it into something it is not (see Àlex Ollé's Spanish Civil War production for the Royal Opera House in 2016) risks impacting on the whole fabric of the opera and work against where its real strengths are.

The most that Phelan was able to achieve was to tweak the focus to make Norma a little less victim of betrayal by a man and more taking a determined and principled self-sacrificing stand for the sake of her children. I didn't think this really came across or even that it was needed, but in passing - again never made overly explicit - the underlying Greek tragedy elements of this situation could be seen as having wider implications for the individual and society (not just a woman in a relationship with the wrong man) on opposition to controlling and corrupting figures of authority. If little or any of that came across with any noticeable intent and the production didn't have any new ideas as a concept to sit the drama upon, it was clear nonetheless from the overall impact on the night of the performance in Wexford that it wasn't needed.

Under the musical direction of Maurizio Benini - invited by INO artistic director and principal conductor Fergus Shiel as an authority on bel canto opera - it was a truly thunderous account of Bellini's wonderfully calibrated score, with choruses well-employed throughout to give that punchy impact where the opera needs it. Not that it needed much, as the Georgian soprano Salome Jicia delivered all the emotional impact and volume required at a pitch that struck you fully in the heart. This was a real powerhouse performance, outstanding on every level, completely up to the quite extraordinary challenges of the role. Jicia's voice was strong from the outset ringing out with a passionate force that she maintained throughout and which remarkably even gained emotional depth as the opera progressed.

It's a hugely challenging role, one sung by some of the greatest sopranos in opera history - and there are few enough capable of singing this role effectively today. The delivery of the opera as a whole was perhaps enhanced by the custom designed acoustics of the National Opera House in Wexford. Lesser known and rarely performed bel canto works have been the primary focus of much of the Wexford Festival Opera's 75 year history and the new building, opened in 2008, remains ideal for the performance of works like this. Being more used to seeing opera here during the festival's October dates, the heat in the auditorium on a June evening however was an added challenge for the audience in a pretty much full house for this performance in Wexford.

If I have reservations about the relevance of the opera and the production's dramatic focus, the nondescript but functional production design, I am in no position to argue with Bellini's writing for the voice. And, after all, the principal attraction of Norma is the singing and the Act I aria 'Casta Diva' - you could have heard a pin drop in the reverent silence during Jicia's performance here. The role of Norma is a challenge in itself, but it still needs the strong support that Bellini builds in to give dramatic and emotional depth to the role as more than a singing showcase. It helps then when you have an outstanding team to deliver it and, in addition to Jicia, I was most impressed with the solemn authority that bass William Guanbo Su's Oroveso brought to counter the high melodrama elsewhere. Siobhan Stagg held her own against Jicia's Norma, Mario Chang was a robust Pollione, and Aaron O'Hare as Flavio and Leanne Fitzgerald as Clotildhe rounded out an impressive singing cast.

And really, when you have singing like that, when you have the orchestra playing as it did here under Benini, when you have a well-managed chorus and a director who focuses on the singers making the characterisation feel meaningful and vital, Norma takes on a life of its own and renders any reservations about relevance or dramatic credibility as pretty much irrelevant. It sweeps you towards a finale then that was everything it should be; grandstanding drama, shock revelations, underscored (probably not a suitable word in the circumstances) by the heft of dramatic musical writing and a roaring chorus. You can see why Norma is a popular work, with one of the most famous arias in the whole canon, but also why it's not as frequently performed as it might be. The reason for that is clearly it requires a singer of exceptional ability and all the other elements built around that. The INO production had that with Salome Jicia and they made it count.

External links: Irish National Opera