Bennett - The Wilderness Voices (Belfast, 2026)

Ed Bennett - The Wilderness Voices

Sonic Lab, Sonic Arts Research Centre, 12th March 2026

Ed Bennett is a composer who some might associate more with loud and often dissonant contemporary music, mainly with his large scale orchestral works and in genre defying experiments with his Decibel Ensemble, but those are just one side of his efforts to express the themes and ideas that he has for his music, and there is another side to his work that can be just as effective, adventurous and experimental in an altogether quieter more meditative minimalist register. Reflective maybe, but still with an unsettling edge that gives you pause and refuses to let it simply slip over you.

We saw two sides of the composer's range recently in two works with a similar environmental theme both related to the sea. Premiered at the Brilliant Corners Festival in Belfast in 2025, All Earth Once Drowned with poet Cherry Smyth and the Decibel Ensemble managed to simultaneously celebrate the power, beauty and wonder of the sea while expressing anger at the catastrophic impact of environmental waste on this precious resource of nature. On the other hand a recording of Strange Waves in 2023 written for eight cellos, field recordings and electronics, the cellos all played in a multi-tracked recording by Kate Ellis was a more meditative piece drawing you into the sea, so to speak. Ed’s latest piece The Wilderness Voices uses a similar soloist layering technique, this time with the voice, supplemented with electronics.

Where Kate Ellis' cello was perfect for the rhythms and variable moods of the sea, the layered singing of mezzo-soprano Michelle O’Rourke brings an essential human element to the sentiments that form an integral part of the subject and mood of the new piece. As the composer explained in the introduction to the world premiere performance of the work, The Wilderness Voices started out with an environmental theme - clearly something that is foremost in the minds of many artists at the moment - but the death of his father at the time of composition played a part in how the piece developed. In the case of Kate Ellis on Strange Waves, the Covid pandemic lockdown made it easier for one musician to play all the parts, but there is also something surely of it being a matter of why seek more than one musician when you can have the best play all the parts? In the case of The Wilderness Voices there is a similar thought of why use more than one singer when Michelle O'Rourke can do it all herself. It's probably more a case however that the nature of this new work is very much more related to personal sentiments that can only be expressed by the human voice, or indeed an array of single human voices seeking to, well, presumably find a way out of the wilderness.

That's certainly more of a challenge to get that across in a 'live' performance, but it was one that Michelle O'Rourke proved capable of controlling to impressive effect. And there could hardly be a more suitable sound environment for the premiere of the work than the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen's University in Belfast, with its superb custom-built acoustics and speaker system capable of integrating the voice and electronics. Composed as a six-part 40-minute piece, the first section consists of gently introducing you into the sound world of a live vocalisations with a few echoing pre-recorded layers. The piece develops across each of the six parts, a low subsonic electronic boom introducing a drone like electronic backing in the second part, integrating and building with the layers and echoes of the multiple tracked voice recordings triggered by the singer.

Perhaps the layering of elements in Brian Irvine's musical-theatre piece Where We Bury the Bones was still in my mind from a performance at the Lyric Theatre the previous evening, but there seemed to be a similar searching quality to the work using considerably fewer elements, seeking not necessarily to reconcile the various layers of the voice, but to find a connecting theme that allowed all of them to co-exist and express itself in a way that words alone would be inadequate to describe. Gradually however, midway through the piece, a phrase formed from the vocalisations; "I am here now". Not an answer, not a revelation, but an acceptance of the only essential truth that one can say for certain about anything, that you are here now in the present.

There is comfort in that thought, but - how can I say this without sounding like I am denigrating the work? - you could almost see it as a meditative piece that brings you to place of self-awareness of being here and now in the present. Being Ed Bennett however the purpose of The Wilderness Voices is not to take you to a comfortable soothing place, and the fact that a piece of experimental contemporary music can be described as beautiful need not suggest that it is in any way compromised. The subsequent section may find that rhythmic pulse of affirmation, but soon the voices start to lose their coherence again - at least as far as words and rhythm are concerned - and the electronic interference takes over to a level of dissonance that comes close to feedback. Low feedback that eventually subsides, the emotions checked, a reassertion of control, the work ending with the formation of a new realisation and truth that needs to be similarly confronted and accommodated, the single word 'you'.

External links: Ed Bennett, Queen's University Belfast

Irvine - Where We Bury the Bones (Belfast, 2026)

Brian Irvine - Where We Bury the Bones

Dumbworld, 2026

Sinead Hayes, John McIlduff, Megan O'Neill, Stephanie Dufresne, Cristian Emmanuel Dirocie

The Lyric Theatre, Belfast - 11th March 2026

Where do you start? The last time I began a review with those words was in my years as a film reviewer having just watched a screening of Terrence Malik's film The Tree of Life. It was less a sense of bewilderment at what I had seen on the screen than a question provoked by the film's extraordinary scope and ambition. A bewildering overreach for some, utterly sublime as far as I was concerned, I saw it as an attempt by a visual artist to put across something that is impossible to put entirely into words alone. For similar reasons it seems an appropriate way to start a review of Where We Bury the Bones, a multi-disciplinary work created by Dumbworld team of John McIlduff & Kate Heffernan with music composed by Brian Irvine who, with an orchestra and a singer, have a few more tools at their disposal to approach a challenging subject.

The title has ominous connotations for the people of this island and I imagine it evokes similar horrors for people in many other places that have seen war and violence in recent decades, and indeed in the world today. That's not what the piece is about, although it could certainly be seen to be a part of it, as the work starts with the discovery of various artefacts during an archaeological dig in Kilkenny, one of which is a bone. One of the first considerations is to identify whether it is a human bone and to look for any signs of trauma, indications of an injury or violent death, as that would be the beginning of a story, a way of building a picture of a life. As an archaeologist René, in an onscreen message, considers that there are limitations on how much scientific enquiry can imagine, and wonders what an artist would make of such material. That's the beginning of Where We Bury the Bones.

Well, that's one starting point but we may actually need to go back further than that. Where indeed do you start to consider the circumstances that lead to an ancient bone being found in this part of the world? A narrative description has already set the scene, considering the historical formation of the valley, building up a picture through our understanding of the geology, chemistry, behaviours and patterns in nature, the valley hewn by ice and shaped by the flow of the river, but there is more than one starting point here, there are layers of history and the flow of time has also contributed to the picture. These are marked out by a number of musical and theatrical layers including a sung voice, technical and historical data feeds, dramatic presentation, a music score played by an 8-piece orchestra, dance movements, and a live projection of an actual scale model of the landscape in question.

"Where do you start?" I admit does apply to some extent with grappling with understanding what the work is about. Where We Bury the Bones started as a commission for the Kilkenny Arts Festival in 2025, the work stemming from the questions that arise with the discovery of a single bone unearthed during archaeological excavations in Kilkenny’s Abbey Quarter. So the work is 'site specific' in a way, but evidently it has a much wider remit and perspective, so is indeed hard to know where to start. As a work of many layers, there are similarly many layers and ways to approach the work. Words are just one way, but that alone can never be entirely sufficient even if Megan O'Neill, dressed in white, appears to give voice to the bone itself. Interacting with the other elements however, how the music speaks and how bare technical facts meet with lived human experience - past, present and looking to the future - allows the viewer to piece together their own story and indeed their own part in the story.

The past is evoked in snatches of traditional Irish music, some the on-stage orchestra interacting with an on-screen musician, the present with the creation of a skateboard park that is overlaid on the site. On a voice-over, some of the skaters testify to its importance to the here and now, a place where community comes together but also a place where new stories are made and another layer of history and archaeological mystery may be laid down for the future. The scope of what is brought together over the running time of one hour is tremendous and Brian Irvine's music has a large part to play in creating that environment, creating the musical landscape to bring it all together. As a composer Irvine has never been tired down to a single style of music but uses whatever instruments and means of expression are necessary for any given work. His score for this work has a 'voice' without telling a ‘story’, the theatrical chamber orchestration reminding me of Louis Andriessen, but with a directness and purpose of its own, anchored in the landscape in its unearthing of people and history but liberated in the flow of time; past, present and future layered. 

There is no narrative line to tell you any of this. Where We Bury the Bones doesn't rely on theatrical conventions or familiar musical reference points or motifs, it doesn't settle for fitting it to preconceived ideas or tell you what you should be taking away from this. It does what it should do which is to let the medium determine the best way of getting the ideas across, building a picture, allowing the multi-disciplinary elements to create their own connections as well as creating the space for the individual in the audience to place themselves within it. If you come out of seeing an production wondering what it was all about, that is much better than having answers handed to you. In the case of the scope and ambition of what this work is about, answers would be impossible anyway in an hour-long performance, but it does nonetheless give you everything you need to think more deeply about our place in this world for a long time afterwards, along with the realisation that we take too much of it for granted.

External links: Dumbworld

Weill - Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (London, 2026)

Kurt Weill & Berthold Brecht - Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

English National Opera, 2026

André de Ridder, Jamie Manton, Rosie Aldridge, Kenneth Kellogg, Mark Le Brocq, Simon O'Neill, Danielle de Niese, Alex Otterburn, Elgan Llŷr Thomas, David Shipley, Zwakele Tshabalala, Susanna Tudor-Thomas, Joanne Appleby, Ella Kirkpatrick, Adam Taylor, Damon Gould, Deborah Davison, Sophie Goldrick, Claire Mitcher

The Coliseum, London - 18th February 2026

Some operas make their mark and are soon forgotten, others only reveal their brilliance in revival after centuries, and then there are some who despite their troubled origins seem to always have an enduring ability to remain relevant and connect with whatever is going on in the world at any given time. Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny certainly has a significant social and political stance that arises out of the time of its composition in the Berlin of the Weimar Republic during the ascent of the Nazis, but its powerful legacy goes deeper than that to the extent that it could just as easily be an opera written for our own times. Most evidently it's there in Brecht's fearlessly confrontational subject matter and libretto, but Weill's music is just an important a factor in how that message is put across and undoubtedly the strength of the message and its ability to speak just as powerfully to us today makes it feel like an opera for our times as well as its own time. And, you suspect, for the times ahead. Watch out for that giant tornado heading our way.

That said, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, from my experience of productions at Madrid, Covent Garden and Aix-en-Provence is a tough opera to stage and get right. As one of the iconoclasts of the theatrical stage, Brecht has a lot to do with making it problematic for any director who wants to put their own stamp on the material, but the subject itself is one that requires a balance of subtlety and lack of subtlety at the right points. The production for the English National Opera directed by Jamie Manton and set designer Milla Clarke is one of the best efforts I've seen at meeting those challenges. There is no attempt to glamorise the show, no reliance on operatic clichés or clever ideas. The concept of the city emerging from the container box of the lorry that the three on-the-run criminals arrive in as the foundation for their philosophy to build a city (a nation) where everything is permitted as long as you have money is not far removed from the Royal Opera House version back in 2015, but it ties in nicely with the Brechtian method of maintaining the distancing awareness of the work's theatricality, and the production remains true to that idea throughout.

There is good reason for that, of course, as Brecht and Weill don't want you to be thinking this is just a night out at the opera - they have other intentions and would rather implicate the audience into a self-questioning of the kind of society in which they themselves are participant: a society of unbridled and deregulated capitalism, consumerism and neoliberalism in a downward death loop spiral. I noticed that the comments of the director and designer and the programme notes are somewhat reticent about mentioning any of these words or about the opera or the production making any political statement, not even making any reference to the obvious parallels we can see in the USA related to the Epstein controversy, political populism and the current US administration's attitude towards the forces of justice taking precedence over law, instead preferring to see the opera as a condemnation of unbridled "power" and "pleasure". It's far more than that, but it's a sad sign of the times where artists have to be careful what they say (Wim Wenders most recently taking just such a controversial stance at the Berlin Film Festival), but thankfully all of what needs to be said is apparent in the stage design and production, and most significantly in the power of the work itself.

It's a production that doesn't draw attention to its set designs. Everything is kept relatively simple; a backdrop displays slogans or principles that society adheres to, even if it doesn't say it openly, in its obeisance to the power of money. The only law here of course is that everything is permitted and you are beyond the law as long as you have money. Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of that - or at least the most unsettling aspect that jumps out today of the many social indulgences that the opera skewers - occurs in the final act where 'justice' comes under scrutiny and it becomes apparent that we are indeed living in times where you can kill with impunity if its suits the agenda of those the money and power who feel their authority and position being threatened. God forbid that people with no money - the greatest sin in this society - dare to think they have any right to say what they think. That seems to be the way it works in America at the minute but it's an in-built feature of our own system. And who needs tornados to wreak destruction when we’re doing a good job of destroying the world ourselves?

No, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is not a comforting opera, but it has an important message for our times if we are willing to listen and if someone is brave enough to put it on in full awareness of its power and how to get it across. So credit to the ENO's new Music Director Designate André de Ridder and the ENO, since I'm sure that the Arts Council would like to see the company play it safe. Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is not a safe choice, yet it was a complete sell out (box office-wise) at the Coliseum. That's immensely hearting for those who love the venue, the institution and opera.

Musically this one was a marvel. I've heard this opera many times on a screen and on a disc, but it seems that it's only live in the theatre that the range and richness of the score be can be fully appreciated, as well as its power to deliver the message. The Threepenny Opera by Brecht and Weill is more music theatre, but Mahagonny is truly operatic in scope, if not in any conventional manner. It was clear that de Ridder was revelling in conducting this and you can see and hear why: it sounded magnificent. The singing - well, it's not the kind of work that you go to see to judge the merits of the principal opera singers, but it has its challenges nonetheless, particularly when sung in English. The Wagnerian tenor Simon O'Neill was the standout here for me as Jimmy McIntyre, but Danielle de Niese also made a good impression, giving something of a glamorous star turn as Jenny Smith. Rosie Aldridge, Kenneth Kellogg and Mark Le Brocq gave solid performances as Leokadja Begbick, Trinity Moses and Fatty the Bookkeeper. The chorus were excellent.

Musically and theatrically this production of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny struck home. It seemed to reconcile the contradictions between Brechtian distancing and the emotional involvement of Kurt Weill's wondrous score, working with the head and the heart. Act III in particular did everything it was supposed to do, not just delivering on what had been established in the first two acts, but bringing those realisations and their relevance home. Coming back to this work after a number of years and seeing the work performed stripped back to its essentials, it was something of a revelation to realise just how much modern opera owes to this work with its willingness to stretch boundaries, its refusal to accept limitations of musical conventions and taste as well as its fearlessly confrontational subject matter. Seen in this light, it must be considered alongside Berg's Lulu as one of the defining works of the 20th century.

External links: English National Opera

Production stills: Tristram Kenton

Rossini - Torvaldo e Dorliska (Pesaro, 2006)

Giaochino Rossini - Torvaldo e Dorliska

Rossini Opera Festival, 2006

Victor Pablo Pérez, Mario Martone, Darina Takova, Michele Pertusi, Francesco Meli, Bruno Praticò, Jeanette Fischer, Simone Alberghini

Dynamic DVD

As far as Rossini operas go Torvaldo e Dorliska is a fairly obscure one, but then for composer of 40 operas of which less than a handful are regularly performed, there are many places for a work like this to get lost, not least since it was overshadowed by Rossini's subsequent opera, Il barbiere di Sigivlia. It's not surprising that it's been overshadowed, forgotten and intentionally ignored because Torvaldo e Dorliska is not a particularly notable work, one moreover that falls into that tricky category of opera semiseria, blending high melodrama with comedy.

Even as a 'rescue opera' it's not a work that is meant to be taken seriously or offer any political commentary. Beethoven's only opera written in that style, Fidelio, is one of the few of such works that have a serious intent, one that the composer laboured over incessantly to get right. In general the rescue opera has one purpose and that's to provide high drama, passionate expressions of fidelity between lovers and their determination to overcome the odds of the evil powers stacked against them. And, in the process, give the singers challenging arias in heroic roles to demonstrate their ability. Torvaldo e Dorlinda is designed to do just that and Rossini delivers a capable work in that style, exhibiting his usual familiar mannerisms and qualities, but the work itself feels perfunctory and too tied to convention.

As far as the plot goes, it keeps things simple and to the point with little nuance and minimal distraction from the driving purpose of the work. The evil Duke Ordow has struck down his love rival Torvaldo, who is married to the beautiful Polish girl Dorliska. Dorliska, looking for her husband inadvertently wanders into Ordow Castle (as you do) and into the clutches of Ordow. Torvaldo, needless to say, despite the searches of Duke and his men, proves to be still very much alive. He arrives at the castle in disguise and is helped by the Duke's manservant Giorgio, who has no great love for his master, to gain entry so that he can save his wife or meet with death. Ah, cruel destiny! The libretto is littered with such arch proclamations, exaggerated stage directions, heaving bosoms, sneering villains, heroic stands and dramatic swooning. It's classic classical opera.

It fairly romps along on that basis, despite a two-and-a-half hour running time that labours every scene so that the full drama can be wrung out of it. It has a fair amount of routine scoring, but it would be a mistake to think that the conventional plotting and by-the-numbers structure, not to mention the unfashionable and rarely successful semiseria blend of melodrama and comic interludes point to a slight and unsophisticated opera. As Rossini's 18th opera, composed immediately before Il barbiere di Siviglia, there are still many enjoyable features to be found in Torvaldo e Dorliska; the composer’s ability to set the drama to music with style and some flair is fully apparent. There are the usual fast tongue-twisting passages, here combined with duets and trios all sung simultaneously interweaving at different speeds. A lot is to show off and thrill, but it isn't entirely divorced from the cross purposes intent of the drama.

The scenes for the drama place no great demands on this staging of Torvaldo e Dorliska for the 2006 Rossini Opera Festival (who else would perform this opera?) and it's effectively directed by Mario Martone with some flair. The stage presents interior and exterior as one, a rise of wooded area leading down to an iron gate that marks the entrance to the Duke's castle front stage. The Teatro Rossini in Pesaro is a small theatre, so the drama is opened out further onto the theatre on a narrow platform surrounding the orchestra pit, with some entrances taken through the parterre side doors. Most importantly, the direction plays it straight, not seeking to impose any misguided interpretation or modernisation of the medieval setting, retaining swords and armour, not guns and military combat uniforms. It's a simple choice but effective as any such change might suggest not taking it seriously - or taking it too seriously - as that would totally undermine the intent of the work. It's a semi-serious semiseria opera production then, which sounds about right, recognising that is purely operatic drama.

That goes for the performers who are all excellent; Darina Takova the dramatic soprano, Francesco Meli the steadfast high tenor and Michele Pertusi the evil baritone (a speciality of Pertusi). Bruno Praticò has a substantial secondary role as Giorgio and makes the most of it. Jeanette Fischer and Simone Alberghini have minor secondary roles as Carlotta and Ormondo to lighten the tone of the opera and provide some breathing space for the plot and the principals, which they do well. The Teatro Rossini seems an ideal theatre to present a work like this, and the essential Italian character is brought out beautifully by no less than the Flanders orchestra and chorus of the Opera Vlaanderen conducted by Victor Pablo Pérez with vigour and warmth.

The Dynamic DVD release of Torvaldo e Dorliska - reviewed here from a 14-DVD box set Rossini Serio (e Semiserio) - has the inherent limitations of standard definition, but the presentation is more than adequate. Spread across 2 discs, there are a few less than smooth continuity transitions between filming on different nights, but nothing too distracting other than one crude effort to block out a cameraman in one of the boxes with heavy post production masking. Having commandeered a number of the boxes for cameras and props, it seems that those displaced audience members have been moved to the wings side stage. They have a nice view, close to the action on stage, but it looks like they can't see much that goes on beyond the pit. The uncompressed LPCM 2.0 and the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks are excellent, capturing all the colour of the singing, with detail and good separation in the mixing of the orchestra.