City Hall, Cork Tomorrow 8pm €25-$30 021-4215159
NI OPERA SHORTS
The MAC, Belfast Thurs 28th/Fri 29th/Sat 30th 7.45pm £9.50-£22.50 048-90235053
The Gavin Bryars Ensemble is at the Cork Midsummer Festival on Saturday for a performance of the composer’s best-known work. Bryars (left) began The Sinking of the Titanic in 1969 and first performed it in 1972. It has had a 21st-century makeover, with projections designed by Bill Morrison and Laurie Olinder, and Philip Jeck on turntables.
Bryars and his ensemble will be back in Ireland again in two months time, for the first Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival, which will run from August 23rd to 27th. There’s a strong musical strand in the new festival’s programme, and Titanic will share the programme with The Beckett Songbook, a work specially commissioned from Bryars for the occasion.
Five short new operas, by Conor Mitchell, Christopher Norby, Ed Bennett, Deirdre McKay and Brian Irvine, have their premieres at Belfast’s new arts venue, the MAC (short for Metropolitan Arts Centre). The director is Rachel O’Riordan, the designer Gary McCann, the conductor, Fergus Sheil, and the cast includes Giselle Allen, Paul Carey Jones, Alex Connolly and Doreen Curran.
The programme of NI Opera Shorts will also be heard at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room on July 13th as part of New Music 20x12, a commissioning programme of 20 pieces of music, each 12 minutes long, created as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
