FULL DIDO AND AENEAS Buffalo NY 2023 Claire Tendl, Cassidy Dixon, Brandon Mecklenburg
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Dido and Aeneas
- Composer: Purcell Henry
- Libretto: Nahum Tate Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo, New York State
- Recorded: May 5, 2023
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Claire Tendl, Cassidy Dixon, Brandon Mecklenburg, Taryn Goehrig, Helen Lowry, Lia Allen, Michael Harris, Beth White, Mariam Dishunts, Phil Nicolai
- Conductor: Jessie Downs
- Orchestra:
- Chorus: UUCB Choir
- Stage Director: Alex Huddleston
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo
- Date Published: 2023
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
SYNOPSIS: Dido and Aeneas tells the story of Dido, Queen of Carthage, as first told in Virgil’s epic The Aeneid. The widowed and exiled queen is master of her own domain until the widowed and exiled hero Aeneas arrives on her queendom’s shores. Through the meddling of the gods, the two rulers’ fates are bound together, only to then be forced violently apart with horrific consequences for Dido.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES: Dido’s famous lament is an extraordinary masterpiece of Baroque music. But this opera is so much more than one song at the end. The two choruses before and after the lament are stunning in themselves, as is the evil witches’ music with devilish virtuosity, Aeneas’ music gilded with heroism and tinged with pathos, and Belinda’s very human music anxiously imploring the legendary queen. Dido’s first song is also a lament. This dramatic frame struck us as a peculiarity worth digging in to. Why should Dido lament at the beginning and at the end? If this story is, as is often thought, the story of Dido falling for the hero Aeneas only to be spurned by his fate and for her heartbreak to end her life, then why does she languish before Aeneas has even been seen on stage? During Dido’s final lament, she commands her sister, Belinda “remember me.” This phrase holds the key. Perhaps this story with all it’s supernatural elements, with all its mythical figures is not a literal sequence of actual events, but rather a traumatic experience filtered through memory and thereby imbued with larger-than-life figures and events, re-lived after the fact. Immediately the scenario becomes clear: this story is Belinda’s memory of the loss of her sister, the queen. It is her attempt at rationalizing these events and her attempt to find her mistake – ‘if only I had… then she would still be here’. It is her holding at arms length and suppressing the reality of the situation: the queen is dead, the throne is empty, and no hero can save the day. But the truth must be revealed. The bitter pill of tragedy. And yet, there is something beautiful, something real and worth fighting to protect about tragedy. Not all stories need happy endings to bring a kind of joy to our lives. In tragedy we encounter something essential to the human condition, and thereby find something we all share in common.