Above: Opera Australia Chorus and Circa Ensemble in Dido & Aeneas. Featured image: CIRCA Ensemble members take flight on the Dida and Aeneas stage. Photo credit: Keith Saunders.
A terrific amount hangs in the balance in this striking, unforgettable new production of Henry Purcell’s tale of love and loss, Dido and Aeneas (1695), currently in bold recreation by Opera Australia until March 29.
In this delicately elevated balance are the well-portrayed minds of the main protagonists. Also teetering is the need to express the pressures of love, reputation and duty as vividly explored by Purcell and librettist Nahum Tate. Players from collaborating company CIRCA literally balance and toss their lithe and strong acrobatic bodies all over the stage, dazzling us with various circus styles creating shapes and risky leaps around the leaps of faith and fate in the failed love story of royals Dido and Aeneas.
We watch this drama unfold across a minimalist yet very expressive set and circus space, by director Yaron Lifschitz, (and CIRCA’s resident director, Eve Beck) with arresting colour panels and lighting from Matthew Marshall. This lighting silhouettes and showcases the acrobats plus shapes up the story’s strategies with paths or chequerboards of light.
Above: Anna Dowsley as Dido and Nicholas Jones in the role of Aeneas. Photo Credit: Keith Saunders.
The rear stage wall is complete before the opera and through it with scrolling text boxes of psychology and philosophy from sources various- even including twentieth century pop lyrics. The successful creative balance includes Libby McDonnell’s svelte costuming and bold, beautiful singing that brings this beloved, compact tragedy back to super-vibrant life.
This new-from-old triumph is a striking amalgam of the well-known, accessible opera text, Purcell’s clear and clever dramatic setting with new progressive physical and visual elements. Dido and Aeneas’ seventeenth century premiere in a girls’ school would have been even more attractive to the teenage performers exploring regal love attacked by the supernatural if the tale was troped by teetering tableaux of circus performers.
This production marks a second successful collaboration between a forward-looking Opera Australia, Opera Queensland and Circa, the second early opera enhancement of its type. The first effort in this vein between the three creative groups was Gluck’s Orphée et Euridyce in 2024. This production is set to open the Edinburgh festival soon.
Above: Anna Dowsley as Dido with CIRCA Ensemble member. Photo credit: Keith Saunders.
Direction by Yuron of this latest ‘opera plus’ entertainment expertly entwines the music, circus performers, main characters and chorus. All these groups on stage, wound like a disciplined and tight spring, are torqued to emphasize the story’s crazy twists and tight kaleidoscope of action as Elyssa, Queen of Carthage, ‘in chase’ with the capable hunter and dashing Trojan Prince, willing to defy his promised marriage in Italy.
This deft, streamlined early English language opera’s momentum, beautifully built up in the score including keen chorus comment by drama expert Purcell, is well rendered by the talented vocalists assembled here Early opera powerhouse Erin Helyard is at the helm as conductor. He maintains the crisp lyricism of Purcell’s finely wrought musical moments which performers as well as audience of all ages have become infatuated with over time.
Tempi for the well-known musical numbers are often on the steady side, allowing the fine trajectories of Purcell’s lines and periods of the chorus commentary in ornate lace outfits, under patterned downlighting even the more luscious.
In this striking packaging, Purcell’s music is also augmented by the insertion of extra instrumental plus vocal music. These prologue pastiches add to the compact action of the original opera, which lasts just over an hour. The most exciting of the additional music inserted here is the ‘Cold Song’ from Purcell’s semi opera, King Arthur.
Above: CIRCA Ensemble perform in ‘Dido and Aeneas’. Photo Credit: Keith Saunders.
This production’s master-stroke was the dual role of the diva playing Dido. After the performance of the before-mentioned ‘Cold Song’ which tells of the Winter Spirit awakening, Dido’s character sheds her royal skin, revealing a bald, tightly clad woman- the sorceress Beldam-who plans the break of Dido and Aeneas, and Dido’s infatuation with death in such loneliness.
Anna Dowsley as Dido expertly moves around the acrobats on stage who embody her lovesick anguish, impatience and anxieties. In dark, shimmering palace dress and bright orange wig, she is a dazzling doomed figure on stage. Dowsley is supported ably in the emotional and musical trek by her lady Belinda, here played in chorus commentary uniform and with fluid, amazingly ornamented vocal lines for the famous music and supporting actress role by Jane Ede.
Joining Dowsley’s cleverly changed timbre when morphed into the Sorceress is highlighted in intent and evil song snippets by a salubrious witchy duo, Angela Hogan and Keara Donohoe. Cathy-Di Zhang creates a chilling and even cheeky elf, Mercury, giving the Trojan Prince marching orders. Her moment is doused in effective lighting and a strong ensemble line formation onstage.
Above: Anna Dowsley in the role of the Sorceress. Photo credit: Keith Saunders.
Sian Sharp, as a well sung, deftly moving Second Lady completes the ensemble of local operatic stars. Nicholas Jones delivers an even and believably manipulated Aeneas, decked out in tragically crowd-pleasing-royal tuxedo. His sections of will-I-stay-or-will-I-go with Dido’s final act (post-Sorceress) vocal and dramatic command are suitably urgent.
Choreography with Dowsley in the hunt scenes has much energy, and is psychologically interesting, as when she enacts the wounded beast for a moment, reinforcing how Dido is killed by loving too much, wounded by men with commitment blurred by duty and deception.
Nicholas Jones with members of the Opera Australia Chorus and CIRCA Ensemble. Photo credit: Keith Saunders.
Prior to the Opera Australia Chorus delivering an atmospheric ‘With Drooping Wings’ from the top boxes in the theatre, Dowsley’s penetrating and poised, ‘When I Am Laid in Earth’ is delivered on an almost bare stage, with the singer stripped of both costume skins. The CIRCA emotional spirit beings which had a bust time through the story are absent.
The famous lament reaches us via a chillingly controlled, well nuanced arrow of a superstar’s arrow from Dowsley. From a double-identity Diva in this brief piece comes the performance of the ultimate fear- do we destroy ourselves in the pursuit of love, with no need for enemies outside of ourselves?
The wide-ranging implications of Tate and Purcell’s short, famous opera-using a royal drama from centuries ago-continue to haunt us. This new production, like Gluck’s exploration of the underworld, will no doubt continue to thrill audiences who learn from these operatic tales told in music, voice and movement as never before.
