Opera: Conductor Ryan McAdams draws lively, fresh playing to a concert performance featuring Paula Murrihy, Anna Devin and Niamh O’Sullivan
. The last thing he wrote, it was first performed in 1862, in Germany, and here receives its Irish premiere in a concert performance presented by. We are not alone in delaying Béatrice et Bénédict. The UK and the USA were also slow to introduce it, and it was not in fact performed in Berlioz’s native France until he had been dead 21 years.
Alarm bells? Well, it’s not without issues. The adaptive libretto, by Berlioz himself, entirely removes Shakespeare’s villain Don John and all the considerable darkness he injects into an otherwise sunny story, and reduces the lovebirds Héro and Claudio almost to a sideshow. As well, the music is more episodic than organic, a sequence of scenes.
The stretches of spoken dialogue that Berlioz originally included are often now replaced with passages read by a narrator. Here this role is filled by the actor, who, delivering her uncredited script , performs a crucial function, all the more important and challenging in a concert performance: inviting the audience to relax and laugh because the whole endeavour is meant to be a funny one.
Shaw is mischievous and playful, establishing the right vibe with her first words – “There is nothing sexier than two people who don’t realise that they are in love with each other” – and reinforcing it every time she speaks. She reverts to Much Ado liberally, capping this with a breathless, rapid-fire dialogue between Béatrice and Bénédict from late in the play in which she magically – and with sudden intensity – delivers both parts.
National-Concert-Hall Hector-Berlioz Ryan-Mcadams Paula-Murrihy Anna-Devin Niamh-O-Sullivan Fiona-Shaw
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