Great minds against themselves: Purcell's 'Dido and Aeneas' returns to the stage

The Baroque opera Dido and Aeneas, composed by Henry Purcell with lyrics by Nahum Tate, is returning in a new psychological production of the Bertini Choir directed by Iris Goren.

Loosely based on the Latin poem Aeneid by Virgil, who presented the divine wish for the Roman Empire to exist as sincere, the 1689 British opera Tate wrote presents the will of heaven as an illusion, a nasty trick employed by a witch for no other reason than “from the ruin of others, our pleasures we borrow.”

Princess Dido (Anat Czarny) is forced to leave her native Lebanon after her brother slays her husband. She then forms her own kingdom in North Africa. Into this all-feminine space enters Aeneas, a Greek hero from the Trojan War. The love between these two noble souls is quickly interrupted. A sorceress (Uri Elkayam) mimics the will of the gods, who command Aeneas to leave North Africa and sail to Italian lands. There, he is meant to found Rome.

Dido’s refusal to go on after being abandoned created one of the greatest musical expressions of grief in Western civilization.

“Dido’s Lament,” performed in the UK each November on Remembrance Sunday, the Sunday nearest to November 11 (Armistice Day), is often used in movies and television, too, from the 2023 film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, where composer John Murphy offered a majestic grand choir version of the work, to the animated Castlevania: Nocturne Netflix series.

Sydney James Harcourt sings in this animated adaptation, which is based on a computer game franchise, accompanied by period instruments.

“Dido’s Lament” is so moving that even those never trained as opera singers, like the late US musician Jeff Buckley, recorded versions of it.

Lyrics that remain forever

“The lyrics Tate wrote are immortal,” Czarny told The Jerusalem Post. “The philosophical elements fuse with the personal to shape a flawless opera.”

Originally performed in an all-girls school in London, the opera could be seen as an educational one, with warnings that young women should not trust men and their promises.

“Take a boozy short leave of your nymphs on the shore, and silence their mourning with vows of returning,” the sailors sing in “Come Away, Fellow Sailors,” before concluding, “but never intending to visit them more.”

IT MIGHT seem fantastical to us, but Tate was deemed to be such an excellent writer in his day that he outshone Shakespeare. Tate’s version of King Lear – he gave it a happy ending – replaced the original one for nearly 200 years. When asked how a school production gained such a mythic status, Czarny suggested that “when someone is a genius, all their work is brilliant.”

She noted that Naomi Shemer also wrote “Eucalyptus Grove” for a school graduation event.

“The role of the sorceress was originally created for either a man or a woman,” Elkayam told The Jerusalem Post, “so it has gender fluidity baked into it.”

Elkayam, who inhabited the role of Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata in an all-drag German opera adaptation, is known in some circles as Miss Sistrata. Miss Sistrata is a world-famous drag queen and the only Israeli to compete at the television reality program RuPaul’s Drag Race.

“This production is not a realistic one,” Elkayam noted. “We, the witch and the other wild creatures, aren’t necessarily real beings that live in the woods – we can also be the voices in Dido’s own mind.”

“Great minds against themselves conspire, and shun the cure they most desire,” Tate wrote. In the context of the opera, it is quite likely Dido suffers from depression. In this reading, her maids – like Belinda (Tom Ben Ishai) – introduce her to the pretty Greek man in an attempt to cheer her up.

“Dido is presented to us as a little doomed from the start,” Elkayam told the Post.

“Goren,” in this adaptation, “introduced ropes as a stage element,” he noted.

“When Dido enters the stage, she is already wrapped in them – Belinda and the maids untie her. My creatures and I put them back on.

“This opera is ideal for several audiences,” he offered. “It is wonderful for people who love opera deeply, because it is not shown often. It is also short and in English, making it an easy-access production to enjoy.

“The Baroque was not a very politically correct time period,” he added. “They still castrated men back then just to have a good voice for the stage, for example. But beyond this window to the roots of opera, it was created for teenagers – so it is a little bolder than what was shown in court.”

Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas will be performed on Saturday, June 22, at 11 a.m. Alma Hall, 1 Yair Street, Zichron Ya’acov; on Monday, June 24, and Wednesday, June 26, at 8 p.m., at Recanati Auditorium, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 27 Shaul HaMelech Boulevard. NIS 155-175 per ticket. Visit www.bertini.co.il to book.