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