February 2, 2009 - CLEVELANDCLASSICAL.COM
Apollo's Fire mounts thoroughly enjoyable production of Purcell's Dido & Aeneas at St. Josaphat Hall
by Daniel Hathaway

"Purcell’s 'Dido and Aeneas' is an opera an opera hater can love”, as Allan Kozinn put it in a New York Times review last December. “It’s in English, and it runs less than an hour. Its libretto, drawn from Virgil, is fantastical but not idiotic, and Purcell’s music brings it to life magnificently”. It’s also remarkably adaptable to wildly different approaches in staging — Kozinn happened to be commenting on a production by the Sybarite Chamber Players which relocated the action to Wall Street and turned the plot’s love interest into a planned corporate merger that fell apart when Aeneas was suddenly called back to Italy, all without doing any damage to the music.

In its stagings of Purcell’s beloved music drama at St. Josaphat Arts Hall last week, Apollo’s Fire set out to return the work to the spirit of its original performance at Josiah Priest’s girls’ school in Chelsea in 1689 — quite a different approach from the company’s production a decade ago at the Art Museum in cooperation with Opera Atelier of Toronto. Artistic director Jeannette Sorrell replaced Nahum Tate’s once-relevant politico-allegorical prologue with her own, a well-crafted and witty introduction acted out by five of ‘Apollo’s Musettes’. These teen-aged girls in plaid skirts representing the denizens of Priest’s female academy set the stage for a production which surely resembled one that might have been mounted in 1689 in an outdoor courtyard at the school.

On this occasion, we were in the barrel-vaulted nave of the former St. Josaphat Church with a temporary stage erected along the north side of the space, orchestra and chorus on stage right, and in the company of dozens of angels peering down from quasi-baroque Corinthian columns. Sets and furniture were minimal (chairs and hangings) and lighting was only what was needed. The orchestra and chorus drifted in informally through the audience, singers could be heard warming up offstage and performers mingled with the audience at intermission, all of which contributed to the generally laid-back character of the production.

Since the original manuscript is lost and the text of Purcell’s score is only known through secondary sources, lots of decisions need to be made. What instruments to use? What to do about the apparently missing music from the end of the second act? How to put movement to the many dance pieces that festoon the score? At what point do Dido & Aeneas consummate their passion? How (and why) does Dido die?

For the orchestra, Jeannette Sorrell chose single strings and two recorders, plus a continuo section of two harpsichords and two theorbos (arch lutes, one doubling guitar). She chose to insert Michael Tilmouth’s newly composed chorus and dance to bring the second act to a tonally satisfying conclusion, and choreographer Carlos Fittante and colleague Robin Gilbert Campos changed costume several times to animate the stage during the dance sequences. Appropriate to the circumstances, Dido & Aeneas were the most chaste of lovers onstage, and after fate breaks off their relationship, Dido is borne off into the Empyrium by the Musettes, now clad in white and scattering rose petals, without apparently needing to die at all. The only curious decision was a 20-minute intermission which cut Dido & Aeneas in two and interrupted the dramatic flow of an already short work.

The cast of singers included Meredith Hall, a commanding and statuesque Dido, Sandra Simon, a strong partner in the role of Belinda (doubling as a witch) and Abigale Haynes Lennox in the curious role of ‘Second Woman’ (and second Witch), both of whom managed Purcell’s tricky melismas with precision and clarity. Baritone Sumner Thompson was the regal and somewhat distant Aeneas who sonorously proclaimed his recitative-only part. Tenor Scott Mello spent most of the afternoon in the chorus except for his cameo appearance in an extremely boozy and Cockney-inflected version of the Sailor’s lone aria. Filling one of the most important roles were the excellent Apollo’s Singers who sang from memory, perfectly enunciated their Greek-chorus commentaries, cackled with the witches, and surprised everyone by leaving their choir pews to do an onstage Ring-Around-The-Witch sequence late in the course of the action.

The production, staged by Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière, who also designed the costumes, made clever use of the space. A thunder sheet startled the audience to look up to the left when the Sorceress and her sidekicks suddenly appeared in the gallery (also the vantage point from which the Sorceress conjured up the picnic-ruining storm —more thunder sheets — and from which fate in the form of Mercury ordered Aeneas to set sail). As well as providing for a dramatic change of location, singing from the gallery placed Meg Bragle (the worderfully threatening Sorceress), Sandra Simon & Abigail Haynes Lenox right under the barrel vault of the nave, thus projecting their screeching and hissing voices in a particularly sinister way. From here they also provided the echoes usually given to the chorus in ‘Our deep vaulted cell’.

The excellent orchestra began the afternoon with ‘Ayres for the Theatre’, a twenty-minute prelude of selections from Purcell’s other music dramas (King Arthur, Dioclesian and The Fairie Queen), and provided spirited support to singers and chorus in the main event. Sorrell conducted sometimes from the keyboard, sometimes standing while Peter Bennett took over playing from the second harpsichord, sometimes surrendering control and trusting the ever-vigilant continuo department, led by cellist René Schiffer, to take its own cues from the stage.

As always, the Dido’s affecting final recitative and aria (‘When I am laid in earth’) and perfectly conceived final chorus (‘With drooping wings’) captivated everyone. As the piece drew to a conclusion, I glanced up once again at the angels on the columns and imagined them to be weeping along with the cupids. This was a memorable way to spend a couple of hours on a late January afternoon!