This is Either the Greatest or Worst Idea Ever

Purcell Thy Conquest Love

And so we move from France to Carthage. Since Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is such a short opera, I figured it would be worthwhile to explore this work in several different settings. It’s a rather easy task as Dido is perhaps the most recorded (both audio and visual) opera from the 17th Century, and has yielded some excellent recordings at that. There’s the classic Janet Baker performance from 1961 that more or less gave the role entirely over to the Divine Ms. B. And, on the other end of the spectrum, there’s the jarring Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson recording that serves up Carthage with a heavy dose of catharsis. How haunting to hear Lorraine sing of being laid in earth, pleading to be remembered, knowing now that she was a little over a decade from being laid in earth herself after a fight against breast cancer. It’s tempting to speak of premonitions in her voice of such a fate, though knowing Lorraine’s work it’s simply her Callas-like caliber of pathos at play.

The problem with Purcell’s work is its brevity. Dido is a woman bedeviled by a manipulated fate and a personal unhinging, but with Purcell’s libretto it comes off almost like that lost Disney movie with an unhappy ending that was written in Walt’s cantankerous, fascist heyday and subsequently shelved in a Priory-of-Scion–esque hideaway. Of course the music (getting to that in a minute) is another story. But with so much of this story known and left unsaid, Dido can be putty in a director’s hands.  The Royal Opera House’s 2009 production (a copro with La Scala) directed by Royal Ballet choreographer Wayne McGregor and featuring the exquisite Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, is an object lesson in simplicity. The sparse sets, warm light, muted costumes (side note: I would like one of everything that the chorus wears) and understated acting all serve to profoundly amplify the tragedy at the heart of the piece—both musically and dramatically.

It’s a huge break from the elaborate French Baroque pastries that were being concocted around the same time. It’s well-known that Purcell took a great deal of influence from Blow, whose Venus and Adonis only predates Dido and Aeneas by roughly six years. Unsurprisingly, Purcell was a student of Blow’s and looked to his teacher’s work for structural guidance and dramatic flow, including dance numbers, numerous roles for the chorus and an airy, speech-like arioso that sounds markedly different from many contemporary French recitative. In some parts, you can even hear presentiments of Gilbert and Sullivan (particularly in the repeats of “Appear,” which factor into The Sorcerer).

On the other end of the Dido performance spectrum is Jonathan Miller’s 2009 staging for Glimmerglass. Miller himself advocates a naturalistic style of acting in opera and, to my eyes at least, often projects a dissatisfaction with the works he directs. Both tenets of Miller’s faith hold true in this staging which, while equally simple, was overcrowded with statements and ideas. Miller boiled down the story to make it so emo while simultaneously commenting on absurd and rushed elements of the plot; seeing the performance one Sunday morning I remember Aeneas muttering and shaking his head as he stormed up the aisle after Dido’s final rejection. Ambiguous though Dido’s death may be, there’s still a chance to make a bold move—as McGregor did with his Dido, having Lucy Crowe slit her wrists with a necklace given to her by Lucas Meachum’s Aeneas. Miller’s milquetoasty Dido simply exits in her airy white peasant blouse and jeans, leaving a (non-dancing) chorus of tourists slack-jawed. There was also some bit with having the witches (lead by Anthony Roth Costanzo) sing in cockney accents which I still don’t quite get. Simplicity can reign in this hour-long drama, but as stripped-down and budget-friendly as Miller’s Dido was, it never really made a statement.

Like the dramatics of Dido, the musicality is equally cool. It does, however, feature a key aria in operatic history on the whole—”When I Am Laid in Earth,” more commonly known as “Dido’s Lament.” It’s sung by everyone, from Janet to Lorraine to Jeff Buckley to Gyorgi Ligeti. In his recent book, Listen to This, Alex Ross includes one of his most intriguing essays, “Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues,” which tracks the bass line through musical lamentations across several centuries. In the happy-ending version of the story, Cavalli’s La Didone, Ross points out the chromatic descending staircase of bass notes, a nod to Monteverdi’s ostinato, reflected (as he also demonstrates) in Dido’s own lament. On page 41 of Listen to This, Ross writes: “The notes are like a chilly staircase stretching out before one’s feet…Over it, Dido sings her valediction, a blanket of strings draped over her.”

I went to Alex’s spot at last year’s New Yorker Festival, where he juxtaposed “Dido’s Lament” with a Bob Dylan tune, and it’s pretty thrilling to see the continuation of Purcell’s bass line (itself a continuation of other composers) over three hundred years. It’s a musical representation of the collective dynamics of small-world networks. And with such a sonic string in mind, is it at all shocking that Dylan’s lyrics should follow suit as well? It’s a simple twist of musical fate.