Closing Lecture of the 4th Seamus Heaney Lecture Series

 

The current Seamus Heaney Lecture Series--'"The Mirror up to Nature": Drama and Theatre in the Modern World'--concluded in splendid style on 23 April (Shakespeare's birthday?) with a combination of scholarship and riveting performance, all chaired by Professor Nicholas Grene, Trinity College, Dublin.  The scholarship came from Dr John Buckley of the Department of Music at St Patrick's: invoking Yeats's beautiful 'like a bell with many echoes', he traced the evolution of opera from its camerata beginnings in seventeenth-century Florence to the modern era.  He then offered a fascinating account of the artistic process involved for himself, as well as the writer, Hugh Maxton, in transferring Yeats's play, 'The Words Upon the Window Pane' into operatic form.  This was followed, fascinatingly, by performance, Imelda McDonagh reading 'Swift' and 'Vanessa' from Yeats's play and Colette McGahon (accompanied by Roy Holmes) singing the corresponding sections from John Buckley's opera.  Suggestive atmosphere was created by Patrick Burke's sensitive lighting.  Most enjoyable, as well as educational in the truest sense.

 

 

Last Updated: Thursday April 26 2007