Emmanuel Music merged old and new Saturday evening with a bold take on Errollyn Wallen’s 2021 chamber opera Dido’s Ghost at MIT’s Tull Concert Hall in the newly opened Linde Music Building [see BMInt feature HERE]. Music director of both, Ryan Turner crafted a collaboration between Emmanuel Music and the MIT Choral Program. The MIT Chamber Chorus joined the Chorus and Orchestra of Emmanuel Music, along with a number of excellent vocal soloists in the modern instrument premiere of this recent work. In addition, they made excellent use of the unique set up of Tull Hall which has seating in the round and a performance space in the center.
Whenever I teach an introductory course on Western Classical Music, I try to convey to my students that the historical music we study is part of a “living tradition.” It is not merely a collection of stuffy museum pieces to be preserved and admired but an art form that informs and inspires new music being composed today. Dido’s Ghost perfectly merges Baroque with contemporary opera in a seamless stitching together of old and new. Wallen’s work not only draws on but also includes the entirety of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1689). Although the Purcell begins as an opera-within-an-opera, the boundaries between Purcell’s work and Wallen’s become increasingly porous as the show continues. The merging of old and new music mirrors the collision of past and present in the opera’s story that highlights the ways in which past trauma can break through into present experience.
Conceived as a sequel to Purcell’s opera, Dido’s Ghost picks up the legendary tale of Aeneas once he has made it to Italy and founded a new kingdom there that is fated to eventually become Rome. Where Purcell drew on Virgil’s Aeneid, Wallen and librettist Wesley Stace turned to Ovid’s Fasti which includes the story of Dido’s sister, Anna, who washes up on the shore of Aeneas’s new kingdom. This event dredges up the past for Aeneas and stokes new jealousies from Aeneas’s wife Lavinia. Purcell’s opera is performed as court entertainment and the characters are gradually drawn into Purcell’s opera as they take on the personae within it. But where Dido and Aeneas ends with a tragic suicide for Dido, Dido’s Ghost ends with Anna’s death as an apotheosis and points the finger of blame for both sisters’ deaths straight at Aeneas, who meets his own fate. The full plot synopsis may be found HERE in the program notes for the 2021 premiere.
At first there is a clear musical distinction in style between old and new. Although Dunedin Consort premiered Dido’s Ghost on period instruments, Emmanuel Music performed on modern instruments with two notable exceptions: harpsichord and theorbo. At the same time, the chamber ensemble included non-orchestral instruments such as a drum set and electric bass guitar. Initially, this set up a timbral distinction between Purcell and Wallen’s music; the drum set and guitar allow her music to lean towards pop in some sections. Yet, the blending of past and present in the opera’s story is mirrored musically as the harpsichord and theorbo are not confined to the Purcell but also appear in Wallen’s instrumentation, at times playing alongside the drum set and guitar.
The strings in the Emmanuel orchestra expertly “code shifted” between performance practices. In Wallen’s music, they shimmered warmly with modern vibrato, while in Purcell they switched to a cleaner, brighter Baroque sound with crisper articulations. Similarly, the tonal language of the music switched between the Baroque and the contemporary, not sounding completely disconnected but rather making Purcell’s music sound like a dream while Wallen’s brought us back to a stark reality. Even the dancers merged old with new; during Purcell’s dances, they used modern techniques to provide a new perspective on the function of dance music in Baroque opera.
Among the strong soloists, a few stood out: Katherine Maysek’s powerful mezzo filled the room with Lavinia’s jealousy and rage. Carley DeFranco displayed true versatility by shading her voice differently for Anna and Dido; similar enough to be sisters but differentiated enough to depict different people. David Thomas Mather brought an initial warmth to Aeneas with his lyric baritone that gradually shifted to weakness as Aeneas meets his fate. Mara Riley’s light soprano sparkled beautifully as Belinda, Dido’s handmaiden in the Purcell.
Wallen and Stace made a fascinating choice in how to handle the most famous aria from the Purcell: “Dido’s Lament.” Since it has been sung by many a soprano and been heard thousands of times, they chose instead of having Dido/Anna sing it, to assign it to Aeneas. Mather’s light passaggio brought a fragility to the aria that betrayed Aeneas’s guilt at having caused the death of both sisters. Even down an octave, the aria sat uncomfortably high in his range—on purpose. Instead of a strong cry of “Remember me!” on the high G, as most sopranos would sing, Mather barely uttered it in a breathy falsetto. It was, as most of Wallen’s work, strikingly subtle and understated. Following this, Aeneas dies—just as Dido had done after singing the same—and the choir sang the closing chorus of Purcell’s opera “With Drooping Wings Ye Cupids Come” as they filed down the steps through the crowd to the center of the round to stand in a circle over Aeneas.
The seating in the round of Tull Hall made the whole performance much more intimate as the soloists and the choir moved through the audience, using the walkway around the top of the circular seating to move about. The choir mostly sang from opposite sides of the top ring, creating an almost stereo effect to their sound, while the soloists moved about, sometimes on the floor, on the stairs or at the top. The only drawbacks to this venue were some acoustic issues. The instruments and the choir sounded beautifully in this space; the high ceiling allowed for wonderful resonance. However, I struggled sometimes to hear the individual singers, particularly Mather and bass-baritone Jonathan Woody (especially in their low registers). Because the “stage” was in the center of the circle, the soloists always faced away from some of the audience, at which times their voices could barely be heard. So, while the immersion proved visually striking, the blocking did not support the singers as well.
In any case, the show earned a standing ovation, and the composer and librettist in attendance received well deserved recognition. Turner not only handled the collaboration between professional and student choirs beautifully but also balanced instruments and voices while having to turn almost 360 degrees to cue entrances depending on the changing placements of soloists and choirs. Every part of this multifaceted production came together beautifully and embraced the living tradition of opera today.
Ed. Note: This review was edited in response to a posted comment.
Michael Goetjen, a musicologist, harpsichordist, and organist whose research focuses on 18th-century opera and the music of Mozart, teaches at MIT and BoCo.
