| Product: |
Classical in general |
| Date: |
28/10/01 (68 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: , a night out, their album is out at Christmas, so you can fastforward through the worst bits.
Disadvantages: an expensive night out - could have gone to the cinema for a third of the price.
Because the ticket said something about tenors, I was under the impression that it would be a bit like the actual 3 tenors - lots of opera. I naively trotted along to the Waterfront Hall with my mum and her friend. She had paid for the ticket, so I was prepared to watch without being too critical about quality. That changed.
Three Irish Tenors indeed. It was more like 2 Irish tenors, an English bloke, two thirds of a Christian praise band, a technician on a keyboard, a pianoist and a showboat cabaret singer. I want my mum's money back.
I first became unwary when I entered the auidtorium, and noticed the cotton candy hairdo's all around. Granted, they were interspersed with the sleek heads of trendy twenty-somethings, but the overall impression was that of a grannies' convention. In the background was the ominous sound of a boron, the faint sawings of violins, the high-pitched whistle of a flute. The stage was bathed in an eerie green glow. Aliens, I prayed to myself. Let it be aliens. It was not. It was the green of Ireland.
Behind us a women repeatedly squawked 'Gale's mother's done there. Down there. Do you see here?' We kept an eye out for Gale's mother, but didn't spot her. If you're out there, Gale's mother, your daughter's friend is looking for you.
Between each piece there were nasty links similar to those of Nigel Kennedy at last year's Classical Brits. 'I'm taking you on a journey to a deep dark land in Romania . . . ' became 'We're taking you on a journey to the lurid green land of Ireland, through the bogs, to admire the cowslops in the fields.' At the end of every piece, the pianoist waved his hand in the air, not, it seems,to ask for permission to use the bathroom, but to bring everyone off together. Absolutely shocking. Backers should be heard and not seen. They should also be of enough technical ability that they don't need a conducto
r onstage to tell them when to stop playing. The pianoist, it was exaplained later, was the musical director. He made frequent use of windy chimy things to add a background to the Oirish songs. How lovely. How whimsical. How very clicheed.
The interval was a welcome relief. After downing my warm orange juice we trudged back to the auditorium. The second half was marginally better; they opened with three of the most famous operatic pieces in the world, all of them tranformed beyond recognition. I got a faint strain of what might have been the Toreodor's Song, but I'm only guessing. All three tenors had microphones, which made their words very unclear. The two youngest men had nice voices, but lacked control. The bald one was piercing. Not sure how much of that can be blamed on the sound system. Perhaps they are used to playing venues of hundreds of thousands where they need microphones. The eldest member had a lovely voice which resonated with experience, but he confined himself to Irish ditties, which was frustrating. One felt he would have coped much better with 'Caruso' than the bald man, so consumed with emotion that he could hardly sing.
There were no more than about 6 truly operatic pieces in the programme. The rest was diddly-dee Irish twaddle; fine in pubs in Dublin, but not designed for big concert halls like the Waterfront. They were nicely sung, but without any real emotion or feeling for the music. I'm not a big fan of Irish music, but this was a truly off-putting experience. The programme was aimed at the Americans, the English, the Europeans, but it wasn't a show for the Irish. It resonated with leprauchauns and shamrocks, but for someone who has lived here for 12 years, it's quite enough to have them at the bottom of the garden, without seeing them in the theatres as well.
Summary:
|
|
