EIF: Dido’s Ghost
Edinburgh Academy Junior School
“I would call that a triumph,” said my partner as we left the Junior School venue. He doesn’t always get the last word, but I had to agree. Errolyn Wallen’s intermingling of Aeneas’s later story with Purcell’s Dido is a constantly intriguing work, about loss and memory, determination and revenge. The characters are vivid, brilliantly sung and acted by an outstanding cast, while with John Butt directing, the Dunedin Ensemble dazzle both in Purcell (as we might expect) and in Wallen’s electronic, percussion driven score.
Dido is dead, but what happens next? Wallen and her librettist, Wesley Stace, have long been fascinated by the question. Aeneas goes to Italy, marries, fights wars, is settled, but he dreams of Dido. One day he finds her double, her sister, on the shore, shipwrecked. Like a Shakespearean heroine, she’s alone and the storm continues. In the musically violent opening we can scarcely hear the singers. Then the orchestra stops and Lavinia’s voice rings from the back of the stage, threatening the promise of refuge that Aeneas has given Anna. The plot, and the characterisation are established quickly, and the pace never slackens.
The Dunedin’s ten singers and dozen players are in a diagonal formation across the stage with action taking place in front. An area to the side is where the court entertainment takes place – Purcell’s short opera, tweaked to include the participation of Anna as Dido, Aeneas as his younger self, and Lavinia, jealous of the twin threats of the dead Dido and her living sister, as Mercury, the god who tells Aeneas to leave Carthage. In this section the music is mainly Purcell’s but with disturbing interludes. The characters too shape-shift from the original. This is a performance which keeps the audience on its toes, in the best possible way!
Matthew Brook as Aeneas is pompous, but disturbed. How much has he hidden that must now come to light? Brook sings strongly, gaining in power throughout the evening. His breakdown at the end, with his voice straining to replicate Dido’s in the Lament is moving. Scots singer Allison Reid is a mezzo with a high upper range. She’s sung Salome, Judith and Alice’s Red Queen, but this vengeful wife has a musical idiom all her own – top notes which piece through this acoustic, a bottom growl which becomes a shout. A villainess, but with a troubled past. “Then there were wars” she repeats. Golda Schultz as Anna/Dido is forceful at first. She tells Aeneas he was Dido’s “lover, her murderer, her sickness and her cure, do not forget her.” But she becomes passive, almost eclipsed Wallen gives her a big aria in which her voice soars and sobs in a rhythmical frantic dance with drums and marraccas.
Nardus Williams is a dominant and clear-voiced Belinda, Henry Waddington’s bass baritone resounds as Lavinia’s brother and the Sorcerer. The Dunedin Chorus are a collective presence – turning their backs on the most troubling action - and have some stunning modern a capella to sing towards the end. Individual members take smaller roles. The two witches, unnamed in the programme, sing and act with vigour and style. The orchestra is string- based with a percussion section, almost hidden. Xylophone, bass guitar, drums, clappers. John Butt seems to relish being in control of it all. Was that a thunder sheet, or a low flying plane? Tonight in the big tent we’re so wrapped in the music we’re not sure.
See it if you can. But it will be back!
