Monday 7 June 2021

Haunted by the past: Errollyn Wallen's new opera 'Dido's Ghost' wraps itself around Purcell's opera to create a powerfully intriguing new synthesis

Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost - Henry Waddington, Allison Cook, John Butt, Dunedin Consort - Barbican Hall 2021 (Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)
Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost - Henry Waddington, Allison Cook, John Butt, Dunedin Consort - Barbican Hall 2021
(Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)

Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell Dido's Ghost; Isabelle Peters, Nardus Williams, Allison Cook, Matthew Brook, Henry Waddington, Dunedin Consort, John Butt, Frederic Wake-Walker; Barbican Centre

Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 6 June 2021 Star rating: 4.5 (★★★★½)
A new opera which explores the boundaries between past and present as Wallen's opera interrogates Purcell's and creates an intriguing modern drama

Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost - Nardus Williams, Isabelle  Peters - Barbican Hall 2021 (Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)
Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost
Nardus Williams, Isabelle  Peters
(Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)
Operatic composers have largely been uninterested in what happened to Aeneas and the Trojans refugees when they left Carthage and arrived in Italy. Errollyn Wallen and Wesley Stace's new opera does just that, showing us Aeneas now settled in Italy. The new opera Dido's Ghost is a sort of sequel to Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, but Wallen's opera is more than simply a companion piece. Just as Aeneas in Dido's Ghost is haunted by the past, so Wallen's opera is in dialogue with Purcell's with the 17th century opera being presented as a masque during the events of Dido's Ghost. There is another element of dialogue with the past here, as one of the major surviving manuscripts of Purcell's opera is a from a performance where it was used as a masque in a performance of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.

Errollyn Wallen and Wesley Stace's new opera Dido's Ghost was premiered at the Barbican Centre on Sunday 6 June 2021 as part of the Live from the Barbican series and the event was also live-streamed (available to view until 8pm on Tuesday 8 June). Isabelle Peters played Dido and Anna and Matthew Brook played Aeneas, with Nardus Williams as Belinda, Allison Cook as Lavinia and the Spirit, Henry Waddington as Elymas and the Sorcerer, and David Lee as Ascanius, with John Butt conducting the Dunedin Consort. The opera was presented in a concert staging directed by Frederic Wake-Walker.

Stace's libretto takes place 18 months after Aeneas' arrival in Italy, and is inspired both by Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate's work and Virgil's Aeneid as well as the writings of Ursula le Guin. Aeneas (Matthew Brook) is married to Lavinia (Allison Cook) - most of the second part of the Aeneid is taken up with the wars resulting from the fact that Lavinia was originally betrothed to another man who violently objected to being overlooked. Dido's sister Anna (Isabelle Peters), a character in Berlioz' opera but not Purcell's, arrives as a refugee and it is apparent that Aeneas is still haunted by the past and by his encounter with Dido in the underworld (recounted in the Aeneid) when she would not speak to him. 

Lavinia is wary of Anna, and is incited to jealousy by Juno. Purcell's Dido and Aeneas is performed as a masque, Belinda (Nardus Williams) as the Spirit of the Theatre invites Anna to play Dido and Aeneas his younger self. Lavinia's advisor Elymas (Henry Waddington) plays the Sorcerer with Lavinia taking the role of the Spirit. But past and present intertwine with the one bleeding into the other, and so Wallen's music interwines with Purcells, and eventually the drama of the present takes over as Dido's ghost warns her sister of Lavinia and Elymas' plot to kill her. Anna flees. Dido's ghost appears to Aeneas and helps him come to terms with the past, as one last favour to Dido he goes in search of Anna. She is rescued and transformed by the river God Numicus, Anna and Dido are transfigured, whilst Aeneas releases the country to his son and dies.

Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost - Matthew Brook - Barbican Hall 2021 (Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)
Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost - Matthew Brook - Barbican Hall 2021 (Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)

Wallen does not simply use Purcell's opera as a found object, she frays the edges of the piece and moves between scenes from Purcell and the operatic present and back in a way which conveys that both Anna and Aeneas are haunted by the past, Wallen's music for them often blurs the boundaries between the modern Wallen and the older Purcell. By contrast Lavinia is not so haunted, so that Wallen's music for Allison Cook sometimes imposed itself upon the Purcell and, except when Lavinia is possessed by Juno, remained discreet from the older style.

The way this bleeding of past into present affected the plot also solved a neat musical problem. How do you follow 'Dido's Lament'? Wallen's answer was that you don't. The masque performance dissolves into the anger raised by Lavinia, and Dido's ghost appears to Anna who flees. The Purcell remained unconsummated and the music from the final scene of Dido and Aeneas haunts the encounters between Aeneas and Anna and the ghost of Dido in the final Act, then for Aeneas' death scene past and present blur for one last time as Matthew Brook's Aeneas sang 'Dido's Lament' as his own death scene.

The resulting opera was breathtakingly daring yet intelligently done. The librettist Wesley Stace is a novelist (with four award-winning novels to his credit) and singer/songwriter (with 17 albums as John Wesley Harding) as well as an academic, whilst Wallen in her music has never been shy of interrogating the musics of the past. Purcell's opera is treated with respect but not with the sort of arms-length distancing that would be dramatically stultifying. The piece was rather longer than the promised 90 minutes and sitting in an over-warm and stultifyingly stuffy Barbican Hall, it felt a little too long but subsequent viewing might change that. The work is travelling to the Buxton Festival in July and then the Edinburgh Festival and it will be intriguing to see how both the work and the performances develop.

Wallen's music was cleverly varied, we first heard Matthew Brook's Aeneas in recitative which could almost be Purcellian, and Wallen's writing for the strings of the Dunedin Consort (an ensemble she has worked with previously) was wonderfully evocative, creating a sense of the continuity of Purcell's style into the 20th and 21st centuries via composers such as Britten. Yet there were other moments when Wallen was firmly 21st century, introducting extra percussion and a bass guitar (a lovely distorted echo of the moments when Elizabeth Kenny played baroque guitar in the Purcell) situating us a modern observers. Whilst the scene in Act Three, when Dido and Anna are transfigured, was positively numinous with Wallen writing luminously for two soloists (Isabelle Peters and Nardus Williams), chorus and orchestra.

Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost - Henry Waddington, Lucy Goddard, Judy Louie Brown - Barbican Hall 2021 (Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)
Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost - Henry Waddington, Lucy Goddard, Judy Louie Brown - Barbican Hall 2021 (Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)

Isabelle Peters was a relatively last-minute replacement as Anna/Dido, but there was no sense of this in her performance. She was a movingly haunted Anna and a dignified Dido, moving between the two with ease and creating a single performance that happened to have music by two composers some 300 years apart. It was a shame that we were not allowed to hear her singing 'Dido's Lament' it would have been quite something.

As Aeneas, Matthew Brook was a marvel, conveying much whilst remaining stylish and in period. As the opera progressed you really felt that the boundaries between past and present were dissolving. His scenes with Anna and the Ghost of Dido towards the end of the opera were spine tingling. And it isn't many bass-baritones who get to sing one of the most iconic arias in operatic history, but Brook did so with style and moving dignity.

Lavinia is not the most sympathetic character, and Allison Cook clearly relished this. Visually arresting in stylishly crisp trouser suit and heels, she was prickly from the start, and developed into a highly vivid character with a strong dramatic presence. Henry Waddington managed to rise above the suspicion that the character of Elymas was there because they needed someone to play the Sorceror, but Waddington certainly made him a presence. Nardus Williams was a stylish and engaging Belinda, yet the role also linked the old and new operas dramatically whilst Williams provided fine vocal support in the Act Trhee transfiguration scene.

These cast members were supported by a number of soloists from the chorus. David Lee was Ascanius (now grown up and a tenor rather than Berlioz' soprano), a small but strong presence, whilst the stray women and witches were Jessica Leary, Lucy Goddard and Judy Louie Brown, lively performances all.

Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost - John Butt, Dunedin Consort - Barbican Hall 2021 (Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)
Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost - John Butt, Dunedin Consort - Barbican Hall 2021
(Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)

The chorus had quite a bit to do, as Wallen often used it was commentary in the modern scenes, and to provide another palate of colour in the orchestration. The chorus of the Dunedin Consort entered into all aspects of the drama with a will, yet their performance of the final chorus from Purcell's opera, re-located to the end of Wallen's drama, was profoundly moving.

John Butt and the Dunedin Consort moved between the two musical worlds with ease, so much so that you started to forget that there were indeed two. This was a strong performance of Purcell's opera but the managed to imbue Wallen's music with a real sense of presence.

Frederic Wake-Walker's production was simple but effective, making imaginative use of limited resources and always making sure that we knew who was whom (important in an opera where characters take other roles) and what the dramatic import was.

The opera was a co-production between the Barbican, Buxton International Festival, Dunedin Consort, Edinburgh International Festival, Mahogany Opera, and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale, and travels to Buxton International Festival on 11, 14 and 17 July 2021 and to the Edinburgh International Festival from 20 to 22 August 2021, and we look forward to bringing news of the San Francisco-based Philharmonic Baroque Orchestra's performances. 

Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost - Isabelle Peters - Barbican Hall 2021 (Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)
Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost - Isabelle Peters - Barbican Hall 2021
(Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)


Programming Purcell's Dido and Aeneas remains something of a challenge for opera companies, what do you perform to accompany it. Now Errollyn Wallen and Wesley Stace have come up with a daring and imaginative solution, I do hope that other opera companies take them up on the challenge.



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