Dido and Aeneas in Amsterdam

Henry Purcell (composer), Nathum Tate (librettist)
Dido And Aeneas
October 3, 2009
Venue: Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam
Company: DNO
Directed by: Deborah Warner
Les Arts Florissants conducted by William Christie


Dido - Malena Ernman
Aeneas - Luca Pisaroni
Belinda - Judith van Wanroij
Second Woman - Lina Markeby
Sorceress - Hilary Summers
First Witch - Céline Ricci
Second Witch - Ana Quintans
Spirit - Marc Mauillon
Sailor - Ben Davies


Pictures and Trailer (c) DNO


Dido and Aeneas is an opera that is difficult in its simplicity. The story is simple enough: Dido is in love with Aeneas. Aeneas reciprocates the feeling. Stirred on by Belinda, Dido's confidante, they hit it off and go hunting. Meanwhile, a group of witches gathers and they decide on ruining Dido by separating her from Aeneas by - hark! hark! - conjuring a spirit, letting him pretend to be Mercury with a command from the gods (namely that Aeneas leave Carthage at once). The spirit appears to Aeneas, who immediately agrees to sail off. Aeneas then breaks the news to Dido, who gets rather distressed. Aeneas then offers to stay anyway ("I'll stay!"), but Dido does not want him anymore ("away, away!"). Aeneas sails off and Dido dies (from poison in this production). And all that in 60 minutes at the very most. Which is, honestly, impossible to pull of credibly.

Dido, supported by Belinda and another woman, sings her lament and dies.

So it's all the more surprising that Deborah Warner actually pulled off a credible Dido and Aeneas: in this production, it is highlighted that, for Dido, it's all or nothing. Dido also seems to know beforehand that, if she gets involved with Aeneas, it's doomed to end badly. So, we get to really understand her, and sympathize with her. We see a Dido who is initially trying to protect herself from heartache, then - advised by her confidante Belinda - decides to give it her all, and then - when she learns that Aeneas really wants to leave her - harshly sends him off to sea and herself off to death by means of the bottle of poison she has been carrying around all along, 'just in case'. So, a lot of credit goes to the mezzo Malena Ernman, who proved herself an amazing singer and actress (and whose "When I am laid..." was thoroughly heartbreaking).


To the Hills and the Vales...

Praise should also be given to Luca Pisaroni (Aeneas), who's almost starting to become DNO's resident early music baritone (which is, by the way, a very good thing - artists of his calibre, reliability and acting abilities are hard to come by). Aeneas is a tiny role, but Pisaroni managed to fill it out as much as possible. Incredible though it may seem, we also got to understand a bit of Aeneas. Aeneas is utterly charming, tosses around alluring smiles everywhere, but for him the relationship with Dido is in the end just a summer love, a fling, not meant to go too deep and not meant to last. When he's called away, it doesn't bother him - the only thing he worries about is how to break the news to Dido. If anything, Aeneas wants to avoid problems.

Dido and Aeneas fiddling around

The witches, although intentionally incredibly over the top, were quite nice. In their case, the music was handled quite flexibly, probably in order to reinforce their almost fairy tale-like quality ("Look at me! I'm an evil witch! I want death and destruction!"). Belinda, Dido's confidante, was also well-sung and well-acted: she is portrayed as the type of woman who only reads trashy romance novels and gets excited when she can actually help Dido and Aeneas on their way to what she probably thinks will be their happy end. And to top it off, all this under the musical auspices of the beautifully-playing Les Arts Florrisants conducted by baroque guru William Christie - one would almost think things couldn't be done better.

The one point of criticism I have on this production, though, is the incorporation of the group of little schoolgirls that runs around, screams and dances in between the acts. Seriously - why? Okay, I get why: the opera was probably composed for an all-girls school, so it's nice to see that the performance history of the work is taken into account as well. Nevertheless, it didn't quite work out (perhaps due to lack of rehearsal time?) - the girls were kind of confused all the time as to what their next move was going to be, and had to be constantly guided on stage by a number of adults (which, to be quite honest, looked quite silly and unprofessional - like witnessing a ballet lesson, it's only fun for the parents of the children in question). But we'll let it slip as just a minor issue of this production.

Furthermore, as you can probably see, the sets and the dresses were absolutely lavish, and really helped to increase the impact of the opera. The set could, by just a slight adjustment in lighting and props, be made to complement the atmosphere completely - light and meadow-like when Dido and Aeneas are hunting and frolicking, desolate and cold when Dido is dying.

The production's trailer on Youtube

A last thing that slightly bothered me (and does not really relate directly to the production) was that this production was ousted from the Muziektheater by Michel van der Aa's After Life to the much smaller Stadsschouwburg (DNO could have figured that more people were going to want to see Dido and Aeneas than After Life, so it would have made more sense had they swapped venues - D&A sold out in mere days, while After Life needed incessant marketing in order to attract visitors). Well, live and learn, I guess (or perhaps they had a very good reason, one never knows). All in all, I had an amazing evening (although I still think it was a bit too short, and some sort of double bill - with, say, something else by Purcell, could have been pulled off).

Coming Early November: Lots of write-ups on lots of performances! (Renée Fleming's concert, L'Elisir d'Amore at DNO, Cecilia Bartoli's concert and Salomé at DNO - November is going to be a good month for Amsterdam!).

La Juive Revisited

Believe it or not, but I have been to La Juive at the Muziektheater again. Not because I bought tickets for another performance, but because I actually won two tickets (yes, I actually WON something - the last time I won something (a Victorian mansion, Playmobile style) was when I was ten years old). Instead of just giving away the tickets (which probably would have been the noble thing to do), I decided to go again myself and maybe get the chance to 'reconsider' some things.

And I did. Somehow (and I don't think it's just due to the amazing seats I got!), I got to appreciate the magnificent performance each and every single cast member delivered more. Because they did deliver! Even the weak link of the previous performance I attended, Dennis O'Neill, was in a very good vocal shape this evening, and provided a more credible Eléazar (of course within the limits of the character's credibility). I also got the feeling that some elements in the cast's acting had been adapted - it seemed that at least a bit of the rigidity of the tableaux vivants had been thrown out of the window.

Of course, the essential weaknesses of the opera and production remained: the story was still over the top (in a negative sense) - some characters, no matter how much the singers tried to enliven them, simply remain inexorably flat. The production - martians included - remained ineffective, and eerily strange.

So, all in all, I was glad to see the production again, and I have warmed to it somewhat. What I really hope is that Annick Massis has enjoyed her time and performances in Amsterdam enough to return in the near future for, say, the title role in Lucia - her extremely agile, beautiful and warm voice (and, of course, her prowess in the role) would make for an amazing reprisal of DNO's Lucia production.

Coming up soon: my review of DNO's Dido & Aeneas

La Juive at DNO: A disappointing season opener in Amsterdam

Fromental Halévy (composer), Eugene Scribe (librettist)
La Juive (The Jewess)
4 September 2009, Het Muziektheater Amsterdam
directed by: Pierre Audi
Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest (Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra), conducted by Carlo Rizzi

Rachel - Angeles Blancas Gulin
Le Juif Éléazar - Dennis O’Neill
Léopold - John Osborn
La Princesse Eudoxie - Annick Massis
Le Cardinal Jean-François de Brogni - Alastair Miles

All producion photos displayed here are (c) DNO

A forgotten grand (and tragic) opera as a grand season opener, that must have been DNO's intention. And indeed, the cast they had assembled was more than up to the task, and so was the orchestra, conducted by Carlo Rizzi. I was very hopeful and enthusiastic (one might even say slightly hyper) when I went to the Muziektheater for La Juive's first night. If we fast forward about an hour, I am yawning. If we fast forward another hour, I am having a hard time to keep myself from bursting into uncontrolled laughter. If we fast forward yet another hour, I am frowning (which, in my case, can be a sign of an extremely pensive mood or just plain boredom. In this case, the latter). If we fast forward yet another hour, I am looking at my watch impatiently for Éléazar and his daughter to die already. So, what went wrong?

Éléazar (Dennis O'Neill) and Rachel (Angeles Blancas Gulín) spending some quality father-daughter time.

Let's start with the opera itself. It's grand (obviously). Halévy has put in everything you can imagine: A te deum, a ballet (which was unfortunately absent from this production), and a funeral march, just to name a few things. Rather a postmodern-ish (avant la lettre, of course) collage, one could say. Musically speaking, the opera isn't all bad. The melodies are quite easy on the ear, and here and there, there's pure musical beauty to be found. However, these musical strokes of genius are rare, and most of the time, the tunes simply don't stick. The length of the opera (4.5 hours, even with cuts!) doesn't help either: there's a constant struggle going on to keep the audience interested, and when the opera finally gets to "Rachel, quand du Seigneur" (one of its most popular arias), it's too little, too late.

"Darling dearest, I have a horrible secret to tell you!" - "What is it?" - "I'm a Christian!" - "Noooooo!"

However, in my opinion, we can't blame Halévy entirely for the opera's eventual - dare we say it? - mediocrity. Eugene Scribe has really delivered a shoddy libretto. The story can't be easily summarized, but I'll give it a try anyway: Éléazar is a Jew who hates Christians and is in turn hated by Christians. His daughter Rachel (who isn't really his daughter, but his archenemy the Cardinal's daughter, although nobody except for Éléazar knows this - the Cardinal thinks his daughter died in a fire, and the daughter is kept in a not so blissful ignorance for the entire length of the opera) is in love with a guy who is in love with her as well. Ah, the love story sounds familiar. Well, no: the guy Rachel is in love with is really some married Christian prince who likes to dress up as a Jew in order to get Rachel into his bed (while still having a happy marriage with princess Eudoxie on the side). At any rate, Rachel figures out he's a Christian. She doesn't exactly like that, and neither does her father, but they get his blessing to get married anyway. Then Prince Léopold suddenly runs off. Rachel follows him, and when she discovers she has only served as a cheap side dish, all hell breaks loose. Rachel accuses Léopold of having had relations with a Jewess (which, apparently, in 1414 Konstanz, meant a death sentence)! Léopold, Rachel and Éléazar (why Éléazar as well?!) are locked up and condemned to death. Rachel is visited in prison by Léopold's idiotically loyal wife, who begs Rachel to testify that Léopold is innocent of adultery (hmm... right). Rachel, out of sheer love for this enigmatic player, agrees to do it, and Léopold is let off the hook. The cardinal wants to show some mercy to Rachel (with whom he feels an incomprehensibly vague connection) and Éléazar, if only Éléazar converts to Christianity. Éléazar refuses, so he ends up facing his death by means of a pot with cooking oil, but not before he has told the cardinal that the girl that just stepped into the oil before him was actually the cardinal's daughter.

Rachel discovers a nasty secret about the fiancé she was about to run off with.

At any rate, the story has some Merchant of Venice-like potential, if treated well in the Libretto-writing process. Scribe has really messed up in this respect. The characters don't think, don't explore their own psyches. They just blurt out random things. For instance, at moments of life or death, they spiral into theological discussions (or rather, statements): "Mais le Dieu qui t'appelle est un Dieu redoutable!" - "Non, le Dieu de Jacob est le seul véritable!"("But the God that calls you is a vengeful God!" - "No, the God of Jacob is the only real God!" - and so on, and so on). It may be very interesting as a depiction of (even 21st-century) religious extremism, but dramatically speaking it's incredibly boring.

The set designer seems to have been drunk.

Éléazar surrounded by Martians.

Unfortunately, the Audi production only aggravates the tediousness of the opera. Let's not even discuss the sets (I cannot even fathom what it was supposed to represent - two bridge-like constructions adorned with crystal-like stalactites drooping down from them?), or try to understand why martians and other aliens crowded the stage. I don't hate modern productions, I just hate it when modern productions turn into incomprehensible travesties while the director remarks dry-eyed that everything is constructed around one central idea (in the case of La Juive, intolerance).

Furthermore, this production hinged on static poses (probably also meant to express the central idea of intolerance somehow). So, it all boiled down to having to watch a more or less static image for 4.5 hours, which, in this case, was horribly dull. Not that it was the singers' fault - especially Angeles Blancas Gulín (Rachel) managed to make the most out of the static poses Audi had put her in. And I know, from seeing her as Lucia in Rome, that Annick Massis (Eudoxie) can act as though it is the most natural thing in the world. At any rate, the staticity of this production was what really turned La Juive into a stale and utterly dull opera: it only highlighted how flat and uninteresting the characters of La Juive really are.

And that is a pity, because the singers really sang beautifully. Annick Massis' amazing vocal acrobatics were incredible, Angeles Blancas Gulín really impressed with the passion she managed to convey through her voice, John Osborn - with all high notes in place - delivered magnificently as well. Alistair Miles as the Cardinal - with all low notes in place - was a bit shaky here and there, but gave an overall solid performance as well. I am in two minds about Dennis O'Neill, who really sang passionately and in tune (as he is supposed to do, obviously), but had to gasp for air mid-aria a couple of times.

All in all, an ambitious season opener that fell horribly flat, partly due to the opera itself, and partly due to the staging that managed to highlight all the opera's flaws. So, better luck next time, I hope, when DNO stages Dido and Aeneas.