squeequeg | Early opera baffles the muffin

Went to see

thomascantor sing and play continuo for the Purcell opera Dido and Aeneas last night. It left me with a number of impressions.

- Purcell made some very odd narrative choices. In the Aeneid, the widowed queen Dido welcomes the shipwrecked Aeneas and falls in love with hims while he recounts the end of the Trojan war. She refuses to acknowledge her love, but her sister advises her to wed Aeneas to the benefit of Carthage. Juno arranges for Dido and Aeneas to be separated from their companions while on a hunt, and the two take refuge from the storm in a cave. The predictable result occurs, and the two live as married for a little while, until Jove sends Mercury to kick Aeneas' butt and remind him that he needs to get to Italy and found an empire there. Aeneas rebuffs Dido (going so far as to deny they were married) and sails. Dido builds a pyre, stabs herself with his sword, and burns.

In this version, Dido's resistance lasts about half an act (and these are short acts), and her acquiescence isn't even sung. The courtiers just sing joyfully about the happiness of their queen. Then Purcell does something funny: he introduces a sorceress bent on destroying Dido. The sorceress conjures a spirit in the shape of Mercury to deceive Aeneas. He leaves, the sorceress conjures a storm to return him to Carthage [???], and he offers to stay with Dido, who by now has made up her mind to die without him. Which she does.

These narrative choices utterly baffled me. Granted, I don't know whether Purcell was going from a different text than the Aeneid; the story had been rewritten several dozen times by then, and I wouldn't be surprised if the sorceress was an addition from one of those. But it really seemed to me to be a weird way of structuring it. By having the lovers together in the first act, thus removing the sexual tension, it seemed that Purcell needed to introduce an artificial conflict to carry the rest of the opera. It's also very heavily slanted in Aeneas' favor, since he's kind of a dick in the original. In the opera he's just duped.

I don't know if I'm being a Virgil purist by fussing about this, but it really got me wondering why Purcell would make these changes.

- I'm not really qualified to comment on the musical style or performance. I will say that the performance seemed very good, the singers sounded good, and I didn't hear anything that sounded out of place. However, the musical style was very mannered and restrained. I don't know if Dido and Aeneas is a chamber opera, but that's the term that kept coming to mind: something kept within the confines of a very small room, keeping the emotions inside so as not to break out.
- Apparently, Purcell wrote this opera to be performed at a local girls' school, which explains a lot in terms of the relative scarcity of male parts (one, I think). This may also account for how he rewrote the story (leaving out the erotic tension of the hunt and the lovers in the cave, for example).
- Even though the character of the sorceress was a strange addition to the plot, she was the best part of the opera. She clearly loved her part, and you could tell she was enjoying herself.
- One of the sorceress's hench-witches kept reminding me of

cute_fuzzy_evil.
- The character of Belinda, Dido's friend, urges her to make the match with Aeneas and him to continue his courtship. By the time the play reached its end, I kept wondering if Belinda felt at all bad for setting up her friend with this guy.
- I think one of the reasons I'm not fond of this kind of music is the lack of percussion. I like percussion.
- The choreography, while kept simple, was interesting. And I've never seen a Dance of the Tavern Wenches before. I have to like that.
- Will someone tell me what "tushes" means? Not in the sense of multiple hinders. It seems to be a verb in context.
- At one point, the dancers perform for Dido and Aeneas while in the woods, and I wondered if the costuming choices here (white dresses with green sashes) were meant to reflect Morris dancers. However, this does not explain why they handed Aeneas a pair of stag's horns, which he held to his head. Did the choreographer not understand that this was saying that Aeneas was a cuckold?
- The banging on the harpsichord to evoke the sound of a storm ("horrid musick" in the score) was very cool.
- Maybe one of the reasons I don't get opera is because I have trouble with long arias in which someone is saying that they must make haste. Quit singing and do it already!
- That said, I want to see a "Y'all suck" aria, or something similar using our current vernacular.
-

thomascantor looks fine in a doublet and breeches. Wonder if I can concoct some way to put him in a doublet at a later date.