Cultural Studies
Dido and Aeneas, streamed by Boston Camerata through Sun. Nov. 30
1 voice, 0 replies
Viewing 0 reply threads
Viewing 0 reply threads
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Cultural Studies
Dear AMS folks and friends:
There\’s a production of Purcell\’s Dido and Aeneas being streamed today and tomorrow (Nov. 28-29), filmed under relatively safe conditions in Oct. and Nov., with the main singers spaced from each other (which works well in an opera in which the lovers are already at loggerheads from the beginning…).
The choral part was recorded on a separate occasion. The whole thing was then artfully put together by a video artist.
The link also includes a wonderful half-hour lecture by musicologist Ellen Harris (MIT, emerita) about the opera, the strange situation of the sources (the first source for the music is from nearly a hundred years after the work\’s first performances and differs in substantial ways from the one surviving early libretto), and ways in which the plot differs from the one in the literary source: Virgil\’s Aeneid.
I wrote an advance piece about it:
https://artsfuse.org/214327/opera-review-purcells-dido-re-made-for-the-lives-we-are-living-now/
This article includes an interview with Music and Stage Director Anne Azéma and a link to a video interview with the Camerata’s Emeritus Music Director Joel Cohen about the Camerata’s historic 1979 recording of the work.
Best,
Ralph