Let the music save you from frightful Hallowe'en

THIS is really and truly my least favourite time of the year. Set free from the wonderful scholarly institutions that provide a peace-keeping service to polite daytime society, throngs of giddy, shrieking, ringtone-comparing teenagers will be inescapable for the next week. Then, there are the fireworks, a phenomenon which, while thrilling to the eye of the beholder, leaves much to be desired in its more evident aural capacity. Experiencing the latter without the former (every 20 minutes), negates the element of fun to the point of annoyance.

But, the good news is that there are places of solitude.

Average Teenager would not be seen dead at a classical music concert (we won't discuss the issue of whether that is such a good thing in terms of the future of classical music) and fireworks usually only occur there in a metaphorical sense.

The third chapter of the Irish Times Celebrity Concert series at the National Concert Hall unfolds. The eminent UK soprano, Dame Felicity Lott, will enchant on Thursday with a song recital entitled 'Fallen Women and Virtuoso Wives', amalgamating standard Brahmsian and Mozartian repertoire and the likes, with more unusual offerings, some of them of a considerably more contemporary aspect. A darling of the opera world since her ENO debut in 1975, Lott has remained faithful to the lesser-known works of the song repertoire, particularly through her membership of the Songmakers Almanac, a vocal collective founded in 1976 by pianist Graham Johnson, who will appear with her.

Instead of incessantly answering your door to badlycostumed trick or treaters on Hallowe'en night, you could go to see another celebrated vocalist in action. As part of a series of Ulster Orchestra concerts at the NCH, the German countertenor Andreas Scholl, attributed with "the most cultured countertenor voice", will perform works by Handel with the orchestra and its conductor, Lawrence Renes. A baroque specialist, Scholl is probably still reeling from the success of his recent release with Decca, Arias for Senesino (a homage to the 18th century Italian castrato), which rocketed to the top of the classical charts.

Of course midterm chaos is not solely confined to Dublin and its surrounds . . . every inch of the country suffers from it. Luck has it however that the RTE Vanbrugh quartet will be on a short nationwide tour this week, visiting Waterford (City Hall, 1 November), Sligo (Model and Niland Gallery, 2 November), Dublin (National Gallery, 4 November) and Cork (UCC, 8 November). The second concert in the quartet's 21st autumn season continues to take a close look at Franz Schubert's contributions to the string chamber music canon. Steve Reich's pioneering work for quartet and tape, Different Trains could prove to be the highlight of the concert. The basis of the work is the sampling of recorded speech, mostly taken from interviews before and after WWII, with reference to the vastly different experiences of train journeys at that time. 1988 (year of composition) might not seem a long time ago but in terms of the technology available to Reich at the time, it is light years ago, illustrating his true genius.

Opera The dead man who walked to success

THE odds were stacked against the American opera Dead Man Walking when it premiered seven years ago in San Francisco.

The 39-year-old composer, Jake Heggie, had never written an opera before, and the librettist, Terrence McNally, was equally untested in the opera world.

The production followed two decades of experimental music that sent chills down the spine of the greying classical music audience. The label 'contemporary' was a death sentence in the opera world.

Heggie's opera, however, beat the odds. The San Francisco Opera had to add a performance to meet the demand for tickets, and since 2000, Dead Man Walking has been on the lips of opera-goers from Europe to Australia. Opera Ireland will be one of six companies staging the work this year alone when it brings the production to Dublin for its Irish premiere.

Dead Man Walking was inspired by the award-winning book and movie of the same name. It tells the story of Sister Helen Prejean, a nun who becomes the spiritual advisor to a condemned prisoner on Louisiana's death row. After raping and murdering a teenage girl, Joseph De Rocher seeks Prejean's help to face the truth of his actions, and the story explores redemption, guilt and forgiveness through the lives of those affected by the death penalty.

According to Dieter Kaegi, artistic director for Opera Ireland, Heggie has been successful where others have failed because of his ability to engage the audience through lyrical composition.

American opera that beat the odds is coming to Dublin, writes Jim Haddadin "Jake Heggie found a way of composing music that is accessible to an audience.

Generally speaking, the contemporary music of the last 20 years wasn't consumer friendly because of the a-tonality . . . what an unexperienced audience would want to call noise rather than music. [Heggie's work] is a rediscovery of melody."

Heggie says that, while his music has been popular with audiences, the most compelling part of the story is the intimate journey taken by Prejean and De Rocher.

"These seem like very real people in extremely elevated, difficult situations with big emotions being played out. It has all the elements of grand opera, plus a modern lyricism and grittiness that is somehow appealing, " he said.

"To me, the piece isn't a debate about the death penalty . . . it's a story of redemption and the transformative power of love."