No Stars Again Shall Hurt You From Above Van Henry Purcell
I recently discussed with manager Thomas Guthrie his plan - initially proposed by AAM director Richard Egarr - to precede the presentation of Purcell'southward Dido and Aeneas with the staging of Dido's funeral, accompanied past a option of the composer'due south instrumental and song music, and so it was no surprise when the blackness figures of the AAM Chorus processed soberly onto the platform and, observing courtly protocol, heralded the ritual with unison drum-thumps of virtually violent portent. The careful peeling back of the delicate shroud revealed a delicate white form - a vulnerable, delicate, ethereal figure, seemingly far removed from the tragic queen of history and myth.
Perhaps this was Guthrie's 'bespeak': "Call back me," she urges, only who is 'me'? Who was/is Dido: a tragic victim of Fate destroyed by imperial destiny, or a real flesh-and-claret woman betrayed and abased by a lover for whom god-ordained purpose outweighs private passions? Moreover, how should we 'call up'? Should nosotros lament, pity and commemorate, sustaining a memory of the dead in the land of the living, as the final chorus of the opera counsels and as the AAM Chorus here observed: 'Soft and gentle as her eye, / Go along here your scout and never part'? Or does Dido advocate non merely pity, but vengeance?
Certainly, every bit Rowan Pierce's Belinda and Ashley Riches's Aeneas stood beside the wraith-like effigy at that place was a palpable anger to their grief, and a sense of imminent confrontation and disharmonize. This forcefulness of feeling was, however, strangely at odds with the intimate gentility of the musical discourse. Leader Bojan Čičič, violinist Rebecca Livermore and viola da gamba player Imogen Seth-Smith played the showtime 3 movements of Purcell'due south Sonata in G minor with immensely touching refinement, just the intimate quietude transported us to the realms to which Dido had departed, distancing us from the more visceral emotions of those present at her funeral. The Barbican Hall seemed also large and 'open' a venue for such private concerns.
Pierce sang 'So when the glittering Queen of Nighttime', from Orpheus Britannicus, from the shadows and with moving clarity and sensitivity, accompanied by theorbo and plaintive strings, but from my forepart stalls seat I wondered whether her tender pianissimo carried to the uppermost tiers of the Barbican Hall. At that place was more than blitheness in the Chacony in Grand minor Z730, during which Riches prowled and scowled; the Pavan in M Small-scale (in which Čičič and Seth-Smith were joined past Persephone Gibbs) offered fragile though somewhat distanced musing.
The virtually direct impact was made by the AAM Choir whose voices, in 'No stars again shall hurt y'all grade above' from The Tempest, circled the instrumentalists, blending with unaffected sweetness. A cushion of softly brushed theorbo strumming accompanied Pierce and Riches in 'Close thine eyes and sleep secure', inviting the states into the intimacy of grief: their proclamation that "The music and the mirth of kings/ Are out of tune unless she sings" rang with painful truth. The rites were brought to a close with Purcell's Chacony in G minor Z807, conducted by Egarr with inspiring energy and with, literally, his whole being. After the ache of so much unalleviated G small, the terminal tierce de Picardie was something of a relief.
And, so, in the 2d half of the concert we looked dorsum to the events which had resulted in such doleful rites and woe. There has been considerable contend over the 'politics' of Dido and Aeneas: the nature and degree of the opera'due south engagement with the troubling years of the Stuart monarchy, as well as all the same unresolved bug relating to the dating and chronology of performances and sources. But, Guthrie, despite declaring his belief that Dido is "conspicuously related in the 17thursday -century mind to Elizabeth I ('Elissa dies this night')", seemed here to eschew a search for a topical allegory in his filtering of the very human, and diverse, emotions of the opera through puppets - avatars which rather restricted the range of the drama'southward passions and abstracted them from whatsoever specific or inferred context.
I worried whether the fragile, translucent puppet-Dido - touchingly slight and subtle - could really bear the tragic weight of the Queen's Fate. Though expertly manipulated past soprano Caitlin Hulcup and puppeteer Laura Caldow, in the final reckoning I felt that 'she' could not. However, that'due south not to say that the tiny quiver of jaw, delicately pained expression and poignant hinterland gaze of this Other-monarch were non affecting. And, if at that place was a restriction of expressive range and a sense of emotional secrecy, and then this was maybe apt. For the Queen of Carthage remains a mystery to us: her public destiny seems to conflict with her private feelings, the latter remaining elusive and incompletely understood - as she tells Belinda, her grief 'admits of no revealing'.
Just, where was the anger that the queen hurls at her betrayer, the anguish of confession publicly displayed in the lamentation with which she submits to the darkness and death that shade and invade her? Purcell draws us into his characters' cocky-doubts and divisions, but this Dido-puppet retained an air of formality and detachment, her inner life hidden from public view. However, Caitlin Hulcup'southward polish, plush mezzo did communicate the queen'due south struggles, conflicts and uncertainties. Dido's dying lament tugged confronting the unrelenting basis bass, and at our middle-strings, shining with a velvety richness that seemed at odds with the insubstantial, brittle figure and then carefully lain upon the earth by Hulcup and Caldow.
Similar Hulcup, Ashley Riches was assisted past a puppeteer, Ben Thompson, though both singers showed astonishing adeptness in manipulating their self-representing avatars all the while singing with focus, sensitivity and character. Riches brought a lovely tenderness to Aeneas'southward pleas and avowals, which complemented the gentle lowering of the puppet's gaze and cautious reaching out of its slender artillery, though it was difficult to imagine this Aeneas as an authoritative warrior-leader torn from his queen past the fulfilment of his Roman destiny. Information technology was also difficult to imagine or sense any 'existent' attraction betwixt the two lovers, though William Carter and Eligio Luis Quinteiro did their best to conjure passionate frissons with the vibrant jubilations of their baroque guitars as the queen and her suitor departed for their tryst in the cave.
Rowan Pierce was superb as Belinda, conveying the lady-in-waiting'southward vivacity, directness and integrity through both her dramatically sensitive phrasing and the way in which she bestowed her puppet-mask with a liberty of movement. Every bit the Second Woman, soprano Charmian Bedford communicated a corresponding spiritedness. Blackly draped and illuminated with a piercing blueish hue, Neal Davies was a vivid and surprisingly earthy Sorceress, while counter-tenor James Hall posed as the false Mercury, issuing his divine command from behind a mask, in the rear doorway of the platform.
While Michael Casey's pointed lighting brought the subtleties of the solo-boob'south visages to the fore, the Chorus, their masks abaft sinuous scarves, sometimes slipped into the shadows as they moved around, behind and through the instrumentalists, the puppets losing definition amid the swirling trains. Interestingly, merely when the chorus abandoned their masks for a rip-roaring, hop-skipping crewman'south jig did one feel the full directness and life-spirit of Purcell's music, though, fifty-fifty here Guthrie and designer Ruth Paton denied u.s.a. any visual colour.
That said, some of the best singing of the nighttime came from the AMM Choir. Indeed, if we remained distanced from the blanched puppet-protagonists, and then this placed the glories of the music itself eye-stage. Egarr led his musicians with dynamic gusto, leaping to his feet to whip up instrumental rejoicing and tempests, moving to the forepart to join the Witches' Chorus in their gleeful revelling, "Devastation's our delight", shaping the tempos and phrasing with natural ease and control.
The drooping phrases of the final chorus unfolded in a seemingly unceasing cycle, making public Dido's inner life in a perpetual appeal to the Cupid's to "scatter roses on her tomb", a petition which, similar our remembrance, would and will never terminate.
Claire Seymour
Purcell: Sonata No.i in Chiliad pocket-size (movements i, 2 and iii), 'So when the glittering Queen of Night' (Orpheus Britannicus), Chacony in Grand minor Z730, Pavan in G minor, 'No stars again shall hurt you from above' ( The Tempest), 'Close thine eyes and sleep secure', Chacony in Thousand pocket-sized Z807, Dido and Aeneas.
Dido - Caitlin Hulcup, Aeneas - Ashley Riches, Belinda - Rowan Pierce, Sorceress - Neal Davies, 2nd Adult female - Charmian Bedford, First Witch - Kate Symonds-Joy, Second Witch - Cathy Bong, Sailors - James Geer/Edmund Hastings/Matthew Sandy, Puppeteers - Laura Caldow/Ben Thompson; Manager - Thomas Guthrie, Music Director/harpsichord - Richard Egarr, Lighting - Michael Casey, Designer - Ruth Paton, Choir and Orchestra of the University of Ancient Music.
Barbican Hall, London; Tuesday 2nd October 2018.
Source: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2018/10/dido_and_aeneas.php
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