OPERA Theatre Company gave us thrills with a racy ‘Rigoletto’ in October. Gracing the stage as singer/ dancer/ cross-dresser was young Mr Kevin Neville from Limerick.
A Corbally man educated through Villiers, Olive Cowpar, Trinity College and with a 1st class Masters in Music Performance from DIT, he’s now creaming it at feiseanna, bursary awards and professional roles.
Take it that he sings, sings very, very well indeed.
Kevin Neville returns to Opera Theatre Company for ‘La Boheme’, Puccini’s Parisian love story of the ’30s, as a waiter and worker.
It’s a third gig in two years with OTC for this tall redhead who is booked again for October. That will be Roddy Doyle’s adaptation of ‘Don Giovanni’, commissioned for the Company’s 30th anniversary. Kevin was Figaro himself with DIT in February.
Take time out for Lime Tree Theatre’s hosting of ‘La Boheme’ on Tuesday May 17, 8pm, directed by the mighty Ben Barnes.
With Máire Flavin as Mimi (she stung as Agrippina last year) and Argentinian tenor Pablo Bemsch as Rodolfo, the misbegotten lovers, Arts page talked to Kevin on a break from rehearsals in Trinity’s Samuel Beckett Theatre.
“This is a production with 20 on stage, eight principals, 12 in the chorus and a 13-piece ensemble playing live,” he says of the scale. Acknowledging his bond with Opera Theatre Company, this will be a second spin around the country with them despite the onerous post-grad:
“It’s great to see the different houses and how different venues react, something to get completely energised by as a performer”.
He describes the supremely able Ben Barnes, former head of The Abbey Theatre, “as a very visual director. His is an aesthetic concerned with movement. It’s in a walk, a look, a purpose”.
Of course, the music is sublime, “one of Puccini’s masterpieces, much loved and absolutely gorgeous. It’s amazing to be part of it, in making something so beautiful”.
2016 is a stand out year for this 20-something who wears his gifts lightly. He won Senior Vocal Bursary and the MacDonagh Recital €1000 Bursary at Féile Luimní; the Capuchin Order Cup at Cork’s Feis Maithiú, and the Lieder Prize in Dublin’s Feis Ceoil.
Then he picked up the Sir Thomas Allen Award to elite AIMS International Music School and a celebrity masterclass with Opera Studios’ Kathryn Harries.
Back to Bohemian blues and Barnes’ vision of les demi-mondaines with Sinead Campbell-Walsh, Charles Rice and Rory Musgrave,
Set by Joe Vanek and sung in Italian, book on www.limetreetheatre.ie for Tuesday 17 next.