{"id":39401,"date":"2016-10-21T15:55:01","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T19:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=39401"},"modified":"2016-10-21T18:42:55","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T22:42:55","slug":"scrutiny-dido-and-aeneas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2016\/10\/21\/scrutiny-dido-and-aeneas\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Dido And Aeneas A Scintillating Start To The Opera Atelier Season"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"(Photo:
(Photo: Bruce Zinger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Opera Atelier: Dido And Aeneas<\/em> by\u00a0Henry Purcell\u00a0<\/i>directed by\u00a0Marshall Pynkoski. Oct 20 \u2013 29 at the Elgin Theatre.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

October is opera month in Toronto, as it invariably marks the opening of the new season for both the Canadian Opera Company and Opera Atelier. The COC kicked off the proceedings two weeks ago with the great Sondra Radvanovsky as a dazzling Norma<\/a>. Now it\u2019s OA\u2019s turn to enchant Toronto audiences, with yet another archetypal eternal feminine<\/em>, that of Dido, the Queen of Carthage. It stars the brilliant Canadian mezzo Wallis Giunta.\u00a0 Toronto opera fans will likely remember her, as a young performer during her time at the Glenn Gould School and later as a member of the COC Ensemble. She has since crossed the pond to forge a European career as a member of the Leipzig Opera.\u00a0 This run marks her welcome return. Giunta scored a big success last evening as a youthful, beautiful and alluring Dido. At the final curtain, all the artists were showered with audience accolades, with Giunta singled out for extra torrents of bravos.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The last time Opera Atelier staged Dido and Aeneas<\/em> back in 2005, it was one-half of a double-bill, the other being Marc-Antoine Charpentier\u2019s Acteon<\/em>. The Purcell opera is only 50 minutes long, making the pairing necessary to flesh out the evening. This time around, the Purcell masterpiece has been \u201cstretched\u201d to a full evening with the addition of a Prologue of spoken dialogue and dance sequences. Together with an intermission, it came in at just under two hours. Premiered in 1689, Dido and Aeneas<\/em> at 327 years old remains one of the most beloved pre-Britten English opera. Given its age, much of the staging details have been lost. Although we do know that a Prologue existed, none of the music composed for it survived. Perhaps the purists among us would balk at the OA \u201cenhanced\u201d version, but to my eyes and ears, it works well. The Prologue involves a Narrator, reading excerpts from The Aeneid<\/em>, here taken by Irene Poole, in a powerful and clear (albeit amplified) voice.<\/p>\n

\"(Photo:
(Photo: Bruce Zinger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Interestingly, in an interview OA Artistic Director Marshall Pynkoski says that this production is pared down, allowing one to focus on the internal, emotional landscapes of the main characters. Given the additional material, I\u2019d think it has just the opposite effect. No matter, the prologue morphs quite seamlessly into the opera proper. As is typical of OA productions, there is plenty of dancing, not to mention OA-centric blocking and its stylized gestural language. The choreography bears a stronger kinship with the French (as opposed to English) tradition. That said, what we did see was entertaining, helped in no small way by the wonderful corp of dancers, and the two principals who are about as beautiful to look at as you would find on any opera stage.<\/p>\n

Wallis Giunta in her sumptuous costume was a youthful and stunningly beautiful Dido, with a gleaming, rich sound to match, in an entirely winning performance. She was well partnered by tenor Christopher Enns as a princely and quite well sung Aeneas, a role that is sometimes taken by a baritone. He also has the clearest diction among the principals. The two had good chemistry and made a believable pair of lovers. Giunta\u2019s big set piece, \u201cWhen I am laid in Earth\u201d came near the end. At that point, the stage dimmed completely, with only a spotlight on her shining directly on top, not unlike a chanteuse singing a torch song!\u00a0 Her tone was beautiful, with the requisite pathos. In the few moments when she sang forte, her sound filled the Elgin.<\/p>\n

\"(Photo:
(Photo: Bruce Zinger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meghan Lindsay (Belinda), with her bright soprano, was a nice contrast with Giunta. She sang well, although I must say if it weren\u2019t for the surtitles, I would not have known that she was actually singing in English. \u00a0Ellen McAteer as the First Witch made the most of her brief moments to shine. Laura Pudwell reprised her famous Sorceress from 2005. The dark timbre of her low mezzo was chill-inducing, not to mention her highly melodramatic cackling laughs. Her instrument has a very prominent register break between head and chest voices, which she used to comic and dramatic effect, based on the surfeit of laughter coming from the youngish audience.<\/p>\n

The dancing with its rather generic OA choreography was never less than enjoyable, although I found it quite odd to see the use of castanets in one of the numbers in Purcell. I admit I haven\u2019t thoroughly researched this, but somehow I rather doubt that this instrument was in use in 1600\u2019s England. The OA chorus was exemplary as usual. Special kudos to David Fallis who led the Tafelmusik forces with verve, energy, as well as gentle lyricism \u2014 Bravo! \u00a0Authentic? Maybe not so much when it comes to the staging. \u00a0Entertaining and dramatically effective? Definitely! Performances continue until October 29 at the Elgin Theatre.<\/p>\n

#LUDWIGVAN<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

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Wallis Giunta shines in Opera Atelier’s Dido And Aeneas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":39404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5723,43,52],"tags":[1029,5913,2494],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/10\/OA_Dido1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-afv","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39401"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39401"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39417,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39401\/revisions\/39417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39401"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=39401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}