After the election in early November 2024, I found myself unwilling to watch the morning news. I rise early to walk my dog and find myself sitting in front of the television between about 6:45 and 7:30 a.m. Seeking refuge from the political news, all of it bad or outrageous in one way or another, I have been watching operas on You-Tube. Musical theater, in general, is remote from every day politics and any opinions expressed by works in that genre tend to be superficial in the very best sense -- love is vital but destructive; jealousy and envy integral to human life; peasants are merry and like to dance; crowds of people don't form mobs or armies but choruses, something I find comforting. Oscar Wilde praised the superficial: "Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible not the invisible." If you have a choice between "savage indignation" and music, choose the latter. It was on the Sopranos, that a character (Uncle Junior) said: "It's impossible to be pissed-off when you're singing." For what's it's worth, this is true about listening to music also.
I found a version of Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas on You-Tube. The program records a semi-staged version of the 1688 opera filmed at the Herrenhausen theater in Hannover, Germany. The show is designed and conducted by an Austrian musician Christiana Pluher directing her early music ensemble L'Arpegiatta, this chamber orchestra accompanying singers from a group called Voktett or Voces8, a Hannover choir with soloists. Dido and Aeneas is commonly considered the first English opera. I don't know the piece although I have some general familiarity with the story based on Virgil and synopses that I have read of Hector Berlioz Les Troyens. I presume that the actual opera is essentially static -- that is, a series of numbers designed to elucidate and elaborate on certain emotional states of mind. Handel, for instance, wrote operas in this form, as did Glueck, of course, and Monteverdi -- in these shows, splendidly accoutered actors spread their arms as if carrying invisible bushel-baskets and sing at the audience while a small baroque chamber orchestra accompanies them; usually, there are gorgeous flats behind the performers who simply declaim their parts -- the flats depict vast palaces or classical landscapes after the manner of Claude Lorrain or, sometimes, desert coasts beside the raging sea. There's no action to speak of. The composition seems intended to delineate sorrow, love, jubilation or triumph, grief and envy and so on -- each emotional state is given an aria or duet floating over a basso continuo and orchestral accompaniment that all sounds very beautiful and, also, more or less, the same; the tunes differ by tempo, varying between dignified laments and sprightly martial marches. If you are in the right mood for this kind of thing, an opera of this kind can be reasonably interesting and, even, exciting -- I recall with warmth a production of Handel's Giulio Caesar with a piercing counter-tenor voice representing the great general; it was a compelling experience, something into which I entered imaginatively to the extent that I thought I understood the production in a particularly penetrating and essential way, although I can't quite recall what made me so enthusiastic about the opera -- maybe, it was love or an anomaly in my blood sugar or exuberance caused by drinks that I had consumed.
L'Arpeggiatta's adaptation of Dido and Aeneas premiered at Utrecht in 2015. It was apparently controversial and some people in the audience walked out of the show in dismay. (Early music fans tend to be opinionated and cultish; some of them prize fidelity to the original score and orchestration above all other values. L'Arpeggiatta plays the piece on original instruments but Christiane Pluher is certainly not afraid to tinker with the libretto and, even, the music comprising the show.) After an ornate, baroque symphonia as an overture, the opera slips sideways into some very weird and amusing territory. Several of the numbers in the first half of the ninety minute show were performed to Caribbean rhythms -- the ensemble features a burly guy with a shaved head who plays what seem to be bongos and other percussion instruments that one might expect to hear in a Cuban dance band. About a fourth of the songs were re-imagined as rhumbas or mambos with percolating, syncopated dance rhythms. About mid-way through the show, one of the singers appears in the guise of a scary-looking witch with flaming red hair and strange, cat-like eyes. This woman wears skin-tight leather skirt and vest and slinks around, sexually harassing members of the band -- she strokes the head of a bassoon-player who is aroused and nervously wipes sweat off his brow. There are apparently witches and sea-nymphs in the Nahum Tate libretto for the work and, so, I suppose some of this may be justified -- although the first number featuring the succubus-witch is a Mexican tune with nothing to do with Purcell, something called La Bruja. Some of the pieces feature jazz-like melodies, cadenzas and improvisations. I couldn't tell what was going on -- singers just come and go, performing their piece, and, then, departing backstage. Pluher's orchestra is on-stage, appearing in this filmed version, in a spectacular baroque hall very long and narrow with florid murals surrounding the audience -- gods and goddesses and warriors in bright armor strutting around like peacocks in a magical honey-colored and painted garden full of emblematic trees and the arcades and facades of renaissance palaces. (The Herrenhausen castle and gardens are a landmark in Hannover; the place was bombed to rubble in 1943, but has been lovingly restored and, probably, looks better and more impressive than it did when the RAF bombs reduced the place to battered mortar and charred timbers.) In the last act, some jolly tars stagger around with bottles of rum in their hands. Aeneas goes off to murder the Etruscans and found Rome. Dido sings an impressive lament, formal and dignified and very grave. Then, the chorus sings farewell to her and the opera ends. (My sympathies and, of course, Purcell's as well are with Dido; would the world have been a better place if Aeneas had rejected the call to duty and, seduced by the Queen's embraces, remained in Carthage?)
The show is excellently filmed with many revealing and expressive close-ups. The band is full of attractive, vivacious performers -- I particularly admired the gorgeous second violin who sways and dances in her seat to the music; the rhumba rhythms, in particular, inspire her to dance. The singers are also excellent and very handsome -- Dido and Belinda, her sidekick, are very sexy. (They traipse about in lingerie bra-less if you like that sort of thing.) There's four witches, I think, male and female in one of the later numbers in the show and they slink around casting spells and maledictions and, even, venture into the audience to toy with the people attending the opera. I suppose there are many versions of this landmark work that are more faithful to the text by Tate and the music by Purcell, but this show is intriguing, erotically appealing, and highly imaginative. So I recommend that you take a look. (The comments relating to this version of the opera on my computer are evenly divided between those who praise the show to high heavens and those who are appalled and call it a horror. One of them notes with dismay that the actual Purcell score starts at about 26 minutes into the production. This sort of controversy breaths fresh life into a work that is now almost 350 years old and is all to the good so far as I am concerned.)
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