IF you've ever heard the Dublin mezzo soprano, Patricia Bardon, in concert, you'll be familiar with the initial moment of astonishment when she starts to sing and you attempt to reconcile the weight, contralto darkness, and size of the voice with the altogether lighter physical prence of its owner. Not having heard her for over five years before her recital in Galway on Wednesday, where she was partnered by the resourceful Ingrid Surgenor, I can report that that particular thrill has lost nothing of its potency.
In her early twenties, which is when she was heard most often here in Ireland, she gave the impression of trading primarily on the extraordinary presence of that voice. Now, as evidenced in Galway, she has broadened her art in terms of dramatic responsiveness and characterisation as well as flexibility of musical style.
The very nature and distinctiveness of the voice do, of course, tend to impose constraints. Its native mode would seem to militate against the easy communication of levity or frivolity (an impression reinforced by Joan Trimble's Girls song) and coloratura is not often going to sound light or effortless.
But the coloratura is there - the evening was topped and tailed by Rossini arias that made this clear - and the extraordinary, turbo-charged power of the lower range shouldn't be allowed to distract attention from the fact that there's now an equally impressive top to match.
It was interesting to see how Bardon now adjusts her scale and manner moving from opera into song. She demonstrated this first in a group by Brahms, communicated with intriguing overtones of Mahler and later in Falla's Canciones Populares Espanolas, where she whetted the appetite to hear her in the same composer's El Amor Brujo or in the demandingly wide ranges of Luciano Berio's Folksongs.
The three French arias (from Carmen, Mignon and Samson Et Dalila) showed clearly a dramatic and musical intelligence which go a long way to explaining why Bardon's international career has taken off in recent years. It seems a shame that Irish music lovers have been so long deprived of sharing in that success.
