Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, composed three-hundred years ago, is one of the first grand operas, although it is certainly not grand in terms of its size. The music, lasting less than one hour, is written for what by modern standards is an extremely small orchestra (ten players), and the action is rather static. But its emotions are big, hurled forth with spellbinding directness by Purcell's music and Nahum Tate's libretto.
Dido, queen of Carthage, emerges as a truly tragic character. Dispossessed of her homeland, she falls in love with the wandering Trojan hero Aeneas, breaking her vow of chastity and fidelity to her dead husband's memory. She has allowed her emotions to rule her and overcome her sense of duty. It is the price she pays for being human--a warm and accessible theme in this opera--and she redeems herself by a noble suicide in one of opera's greatest arias, "When I am laid in earth."
The original production of Dido and Aeneas took place at Josias Priest's Boarding School for Young Ladies, in Chelsea. To celebrate the three-hundredth birthday of Purcell's opera, New York's Opera at the Academy, an affiliate of the New York Academy of Art, chose that setting as the springboard for its production. The prologue and epilogue (spoken, as Purcell's music for these sections has been sadly lost) were set in a seventeenth century girls' school.
However, the performance at Josias Priest's School for Young Ladies probably never had the kind of sexual subtext the Academy gives it, nor the defiantly modern gloss lent by the stark white setting and the costumes of celebrated fashion designer Mary McFadden.
The chorus of the Dido and Aeneas, with chalky makeup and Puritan-inspired garb, sits in a kind of jury box keeping a collective eagle eye on all the proceedings, yet remaining mostly dispassionate. But Dido and Aeneas is an opera of untethered passion. In this production, Jeffrey Ambrosini, who plays Aeneas, appears first in the prologue as a teacher warning innocent femininity to beware desire and the world of men. Ironically, the teacher is later left to the hormonal hunger of two pupils (Suzan Hanson and Catherine Schwartzman) who later play Dido's handmaids, and then witches, in the opera proper. Angelina Reaux appears in the prologue as Venus, in the main play as Dido, and for a while, the Sorceress.
Psychosexual Interpretation
Director Christopher Allen has set up a complex matrix of emotion, with one set of behaviors reflecting or commenting upon another. One cannot help but be struck by the efficacy with which Purcell's sensual music lends itself to a psychosexual interpretation. There is plenty of writhing and fondling in this production, as well as a provocatively bare-chested Aeneas, but it never gives itself over to self-serving vulgarity or trades in easy shock value.
The story is about passion acted upon and then repressed, finally, through death, and the Academy's approach strikes me as both appropriate and suggestive. McFadden's black-and-white costuming, especially for the chorus, recalls the Puritans and, by doing so, touches upon the collective American unconscious. The opera, as played in New York City during an age of increasing conservatism, takes on a renewed vitality. Purcell
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