Archive News
Trad’s loss is opera’s gain as MairŽad sings at Leisureland
Date Published: {J}
Traditional singing was the first calling of soprano Mairéad Buicke (pronounced Buick, as in the car), who will be a special guest with the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra when it visits Leisureland on its Spring Tour next Tuesday, March 23.
London-based Mairéad will be performing Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 as part of a programme which also includes Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and his 1812 Overture, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2.
Knoxville: Summer of 1915 paints an idyllic, nostalgic picture of the American South. The work is for voice and orchestra and the text is taken from a 1938 short prose piece by writer James Agee. The score was originally commissioned by renowned soprano Eleanor Steber, who premiered it in 1948, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
“It was written for an orchestra and soprano and it’s tricky, but Barber creates fantastic pictures and colours with the piece he was given,” says Mairéad. The singer from Newcastle West in Limerick, is currently in Dublin, rehearsing with the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra, but these days she lives in London where she performs with the English National Opera.
Traditional music’s loss has been a gain for the classical world, as Mairéad has performed Verdi’s Requiem and Ravel’s Shérérazade here in Ireland with the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra, while in London she has appeared in ENO operas such as The Merry Widow and Mozart’s The Magic Flute, where she played Pamina – her most significant role to date. She has performed in recitals all over the world, including in New York’s Metropolitan Club and the Aix en Provence Academy Festival in France.
“I try to create a picture for everything I do,” she explains about her approach to Knoxville: Summer of 1915. “In opera you dress up for the roles, so it’s easier go into another world, but even when I do a concert performance I create my own story.
“The scariest thing as a singer is to go up on stage as yourself, but it’s challenging and it’s good to keep yourself at it.”
Mairéad has been challenging herself since childhood. Recognised as a talented traditional singer from her early years, she took part in Fleadh Cheoil up and down the country between the ages of 11 to 14.
“Then I started having my voice trained with a singing teacher from Kerry, Áine Nic Ghabhainn. A teacher suggested to my mother that I should do it. I was initially against it, because I loved trad and sean-nós singing, but after the first session, I loved it.
“I was very lucky with my teacher. I stayed with her until I was 17 and it was fantastic to find somebody who nurtured me and introduced me to classical music in a lovely way.”
At 17 she moved to a tutor in Bandon Co Cork, which was a major commitment; in Mairéad’s Leaving Cert Year her mother drove here the 115 kilometres to Bandon every Saturday morning where the young singer studied with Robert Beare, who also taught in the Cork School of Music.
After the Leaving Cert she attended the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM) where she studied for four years under the great Dr Veronica Dunne who “was amazing”.
Mairéad did a BA in music Performance at the RIAM and then went to the National Opera Studio in London, which accepts just 12 young singers every year.
“It’s like a bridge between being a student and professional work, where you are supported by British companies and have coaches and opera directors,” she says, describing the studio.
After that, she was invited to join the English National Opera, also in London, initially being taken on for a year as a ‘young singer’. She has been there now for nearly three years.
“In your first year you sing secondary roles and you understudy, and as you progress you get bigger stuff.”
Her performance as Pamina in The Magic Flute last year was a big moment in her career and a sign of her growing maturity.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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