OPERA NOW MAGAZINE<\/p>\n
Reviewed By\u00a0Richard Fawkes<\/strong><\/p>\n Composer Laurence Roman first thought of turning The Odyssey into an opera when he was a schoolboy. Thirty-five years later,\u00a0Ulysses \u2013 A Musical Odyssey<\/em>\u00a0received its premiere as a community opera thanks to the Walled City Performing Arts Foundation, a major new charity set up to support young artists in the north west of Ireland. It opened at Thornhill College, Derry, played in Co Donegal and then in London.<\/p>\n Roman, professor of composition at the University of Ulster, calls the piece an opera. It may be through-sung but musically its attractive, pulsating score owes more to Les Mis and Sondheim than to Verdi or Puccini; Roman\u2019s excellent word-setting frequently has the \u00e9lan of Sondheim. Indeed, in 1995, a preliminary draft of the piece won the Vivian Ellis Prize for new musicals. In spite of the interest generated by that win, Ellis\u2019s death the following year stalled thoughts of production \u2013 until now.<\/p>\n Telling the tale of Ulysses\u2019s voyage home, it is necessarily episodic and each scene centres on a big choral number. A very talented 65-strong cast, drawn from Ulster University students and two performing arts schools in Derry and Co Donegal, deliver these choruses with great gusto, singing well, moving well.<\/p>\n Much fell on the shoulders of tenor John Porter in the title role. A 22-year-old student at the University of Ulster, he was barely off the stage, Porter is at the start of his professional career. He possesses a clear, lyric voice with no problems in the upper register \u2013 top notes were as easy as shelling peas. What he lacks at the moment is the sustained power to get his words over; too often he was inaudible.<\/p>\n Roman, who also directed this modern-dress production, handled the crowd scenes effectively but was less assured with the soloists. The huge on-stage forces were kept on a tight rein by conductor Sean Ryan, also from Ulster University\u2019s music department, and a word of praise for the two outstanding pianists: Colin Norrby (himself a composer) and Atsushi Tamura.<\/p>\n This was an auspicious start both for the Walled City Foundation which looks set to make a major contribution to the musical life of Northern Ireland, and for Roman\u2019s opera. With a few changes (particularly to the end which, despite the chorus being on-stage, closed with a duet), it could well secure itself a place on the community opera circuit.<\/p>\n OPERA NOW MAGAZINE World Premiere – Ulysses Laurence Roman St John\u2019s Church, Waterloo London Reviewed By\u00a0Richard Fawkes Composer Laurence Roman first thought of turning The Odyssey into an opera when he was a schoolboy. Thirty-five years later,\u00a0Ulysses \u2013 A Musical Odyssey\u00a0received its premiere as a community opera thanks to the Walled City Performing Arts Foundation, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurenceroman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurenceroman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurenceroman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurenceroman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurenceroman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/laurenceroman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376,"href":"https:\/\/laurenceroman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurenceroman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurenceroman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurenceroman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}