Dido and Aeneas

Aileen Henry, Toby Carr, CN Lester & Sarah Darcey of Ursula's Arrow
photo Lucky Tooth Productions

Ursula's Arrow is a collaboration led by lutenist Toby Carr, with singers Sarah Darcey and CN Lester, and harpist Aileen Henry. They are producing a semi-staged performance of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas as part of the group's aim of bringing a modern sensibility to early music, and 'investigating the gendered nature of the classical canon'. I'm not sure what this means for the performance of Dido and Aeneas but it certainly sounds intriguing. And performances of classical works certainly need a bit of shaking up when it comes to exploring issues of gender and sexuality.

Sarah Darcey, who also performs with Juice Vocal Ensemble, is Belinda and CN Lester as Dido, with Guy Withers as Aeneas. The performance is at St John's Church, Waterloo on 15 November 2014. Tickets from WeGotTickets.com Entrance for under 16's is free!

Further ahead, the group is performing music by Barbara Strozzi (if you haven't heard of her, then you should have) at St Peter's Vauxhall on 13 December.


@guyswithers
cnlester@hotmail.co.uk