Theatre

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Daniel Taylor (MARIE-REINE MATTERA)

Even among the centuries-old art form that is opera, Henry Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas is one of the real oldies.
   
"It’s not among what’s usually trotted out for the modern classical audience," says visiting Canadian countertenor Daniel Taylor, who’s directing a "semi-staging" of the English baroque composer’s work next week, a co-presentation of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and Manitoba Opera. "For that reason alone, this is to be a standout event."
   
Presented in the smaller, more intimate confines of Westminster United Church and consisting also of a short concert of period music, the hour-long opera also provides opportunity to "have a closer encounter with the music itself.
   
"The focus is really on the music," Taylor says of the production, which will eschew the lavish sets and costumes seen in the likes of recent Manitoba Opera productions such as Tosca and Salome. "What we want is to bring a sense of clarity and style to the music for the audience."
   
To be sung in English, with a libretto penned by Nahum Tate — England’s poet laureate at the time — Dido & Aeneas is one of thousands of operas known to have been written in the so-called baroque era between roughly 1600 and the mid-18th century. It is considered among the "original" operas, from the period when the art form first came into true being.
   
"What distinguishes the music is a certain purity of harmonies," Taylor explains. "There’s also a lot of rhetorical gestures and motifs, like sighing, as well as pictorial passages.
   
"There’s certainly a place today for music that’s less complicated."
   
Dido & Aeneas re-tells the classical legend of Dido, Queen of Carthage (Noemi Kiss), and the Trojan refugee prince Aeneas (Alexander Dobson). When Aeneas and crew are shipwrecked in Carthage, he and Dido fall in love, while the Sorceress (Taylor himself) plots to destroy their newfound bond — deceiving Aeneas into falsely choosing duty and abandoning the devastated Queen.
   
It’s the opera’s endurance as  "a contemporary love story with a tragic ending" that makes it echo down from the 17th century, Taylor says. Also noteworthy, he adds, is how Purcell provides villains that don’t necessarily have a noble side.
   
"Our media works so hard to portray politicians, for instance, in an ‘objective’ light — there’s this preoccupation with presenting ‘both sides.’
   
"By contrast, a character like the Sorceress is simply pure evil."
   
The opera may also be more empowering than we’d expect of such a venerably aged work. "It’s absolutely a recurring operatic theme, men using or abandoning women," Taylor says. "The males are very weak in this show — Dido is the strong character.
   
"It was a very female-oriented world in which Purcell creatively lived. Indeed, opera’s a realm in which powerful female characters live. Where are powerful women in our popular media and art now?"
   
Whatever modern resonance the material may hold, Taylor also hopes the production will provide an escape for audiences.
   
"It’s a rewarding choice to take two hours of our lives and to cut out the surrounding noise."
 

DIDO & AENEAS
Manitoba Chamber Orchestra &
Manitoba Opera
Feb. 7 & 8, 7:30 p.m., Westminster United Church