I would wish to get all complaining out of the way quickly.There were no supertitles and the way was too gloomy to say the text to Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall this afternoon.
Don't get the faulty idea.I remember precisely every single word of this wonderful text.Who could resist...
"Oft she visits this solitary mountain.
Oft she bathes her in this fountain."
or
"No repentance shall reclaim
The injured Dido's slighted flame;
For 'tis enough what e'er you now decree
That you had once the thinking of leaving me."
or
"Harm's our pleasure and mischief all our skill."
And the music shapes these words in a way that approaches divine perfection
Stephanie Blythe was an amazing Dido: strong, thoughtful, emotional, sensitive. Perhaps, like Christa, she searches for the complete performance. She was likewise a really nice sorceress.
Philip Cutlip's Aeneas was also excellent. His part has a tremendous quality.
But this is Mark Morris's Dido. He would desire nothing to trouble us from observation the dancers. Morris also conducted. The Philharmonia Baroque, the chorus, and all the soloists were crowded into the small pit beneath the most empty stage.
The flock of dancers, male and female, all set the like in unisex skirts or briefly in unisex shorts. They dance barefoot, and their feet slap against the smooth floor. The angularity of their movements suggests pre-classical Greece.
There are several numbers where no one sings, and I have ever thought they needed dancing in these spots. I was right.
The outstanding deeds of music can be created again and again, each sentence with the penetration of the individual artists bringing us to see it anew. It helps to bed every word, every note. You see and hear every motion in stark relief. I wouldn't have imagined this dance, but it expanded my mind of the work. It was really beautiful.
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