Review
Glenarm Festival of Voice
HEARING Northern Ireland Opera's Glenarm Festival of Voice winner Hannah O'Brien sing James Joyce's Bid Adieu at the superb Glenarm event on Sunday, one might almost have been tempted to tell the great Irishman to forget the words and write more music.
It's one of the few lyrics he set to music and it shone. Modern sounding, the song's haunting repeated opening phrase could plausibly have been released on a contemporary folk label this year.
O'Brien, whose success was announced later by head judge Dame Fionnuala Jay-O'Boyle, also shone.
As Jay-O'Boyle said, this year's task of whittling five super talented singers down to one was possibly the hardest in the Festival's 12-year history. The concert and eventual decision is the final to a four-day workshop under the expert tuition of Ingrid Surgenor, Jay-O'Boyle, Simon Lepper, Ben McAteer, the new Vice Patron of the event, and Kathryn Harries.
The famous soprano, Ms Harries, said: "It's a privilege to work with such talent as is shown by these young artists. Ireland punches above its weight musically. If you ask me why, I think it's the Celtic thing."
She's right and in the opera section, we heard some famous arias given oomphy yet clever accounts. Locally based tenor Owen Lucas delighted the crowd in the Church of the Immaculate Conception with his singing of E lucen e stella (And the stars were shining) from Puccini's Tosca. Although it isn't easy singing very well known music, Lucas managed to make us hear the song of love and loss which soars from F# to top A anew. It was spine tingling and therefore not surprising that Lucas bagged two prizes on the night, one presented by Fr Eugene O'Hagan of The Priests fame - Northern Ireland's best boy band, as Jay-O'Boyle put it.
Before that, mezzo-soprano Heather Sammon exhibited great dramatic and vocal skill in her duet, Un soave non so che by Rossini.
Sean Rafferty was the suave presenter and showed the same light touch he brings to BBC Radio 3's In Tune.
As the Earl of Antrim, Festival Patron with his wife, noted, he was on fire, asking exactly the right questions of the performers.
The second half showed the singers' ability to deliver the emotional content of the Irish songbook. We had another James Joyce song, without his music this time. There was an elegiac quality to much of this repertoire.
Sammon's rendering of Herbert Hughes's popular O Men from the Fields, first published in 1913, conjured up a generation soon to be involved in war. David Kennedy gave us a beautiful bit of Samuel Barber in Rain has Fallen. And Michael Bell sang Charles Woods's At the Mid Hour of Night with a feel for the period atmosphere.
You could imagine this summer's evening of great music translating well to television, not necessarily with the full Simon Cowell treatment. Yet it is a competition, with an audience vote, and waiting for the result was exciting.
Glenarm Festival of Voice, which transferred to Rosemary Street church in Belfast during the pandemic, is back, and it's great.
