Purcell: Dido and Aeneas Blu-ray

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas Blu-ray delivers great video and reference-quality audio in this exceptional Blu-ray release
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For more about Purcell: Dido and Aeneas and the Purcell: Dido and Aeneas Blu-ray release, see the Purcell: Dido and Aeneas Blu-ray Review

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas Blu-ray Review

Two Dido's on Blu-ray in little more than a month? Can I be dreaming?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, December 25, 2009

Part of both the fun and also frankly the frustration of new home video formats as they come along is the initial dearth of catalog titles, and then the slow blossoming of available product that steadily swells the ranks of what consumers can compare to each other. That's probably nowhere more apparent than in the relatively arcane worlds of classical music, opera and ballet, where Blu-ray pickings were indeed slim until fairly recently. There were, in fact, almost no major operas which had received more than one Blu-ray release, with the exception of a few stalwarts like Don Giovanni. While the landscape is slowly but surely changing for the better, it's still rather unusual to see more than one version of any given work, no matter how well known it is. Therefore it's really rather remarkable that within just a few days of each other, we've been treated to major releases of one of the glories of Baroque opera, but one which probably wouldn't spring to the head of most opera lovers' lists of what they'd demand to be released as soon as possible, namely Purcell's ineffable Dido and Aeneas. I only a few days ago reviewed the Royal Opera house version here, and gave a bit of the mysterious history of the work.

Because of the shredded remnants of the original modern interpreters are left with, there are various approaches to staging Purcell's masterwork. Some choose to combine this relatively short piece (usually running just a little over an hour) with other pieces of Purcell, in a sort of English Baroque Cav-Pag combo offering. When the piece is staged as a solitary work, there are still several issues to address, notably the lack of any music for the Prologue. While many productions choose to simply have the text declaimed (something that some historians was the original case anyway), this interesting Opera Comique presentation instead starts the opera off with scores of young schoolgirls (evidently "young Didos") running amok on the stage, after which Fiona Shaw (Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter films) comes onstage in modern dress (including jeans, certainly not de rigeur haute couture for most opera presentations) to recite three quite disparate, and somewhat tangentially related, pieces, including a retelling of the myth of Echo and Narcissus by Ted Hughes, as well as snippets from T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats. You might think from this opening that you're in for one of those modern renovations of a hoary work, and yet really this production is much more traditional than the Royal Opera House production I recently reviewed, a production which included liberal amounts of dance, something that would have been quite foreign to the original.

"I think you'll all agree that the name Dido Dursley has a certain ring to it...."

Once this Dido and Aeneas gets underway, we're treated to a gently elegant interpretation highlighted by the excellent conducting of William Christie, leading Les Arts Florissants, the group with whom he has made his period music reputation, and which plays here with brilliant precision and nuance. Malena Ernman's Dido has bit more mezzo coloring that Sarah Connolly's in the Royal Opera House production, and Christopher Maltman's Aeneas is suitably dramatic in what is after all a woefully underwritten role. But where this production really takes wing is in the absolutely lustrous choral singing. When I was watching this for the first time, when the chorus entered for the first Act I antiphon, my breath was literally taken away. The clarity of line and gorgeous intonation of these singers must be experienced firsthand to really understand why I'm so enthused about this version of Dido. Their singing in fact helps to elevate the entire production to a whole new level and helps modern day listeners to understand why musicologists and opera historians bestow so many accolades on Purcell, a composer who really hasn't attained the stature of some of his Baroque contemporaries, either on the British Isles, or on the European continent as a whole.

Director Deborah Warner adapted this version from her 2006 production for the Wiener Festwochen. This is a beautifully spare production for the most part, with elegant costumes and just enough set design to provide ambience. Warner does an admirable job throughout about 99% of this piece, offering a stolid traditionalism in most of the interpretation, while providing some unusual elements (such as the acrobatic sailors) to offer something new and unexpected for the more jaded audience members. About the only directorial misstep is the patently ridiculous comic witch, a buffoonish portrayal that completely misses the mark and makes the opera's central conceit, of lovers under undue influence from celestial evil, trivial and meaningless.

On the whole though, this is a luxurious mounting that will whisk most viewers vicariously back to Purcell's heyday, awash in the sights and sounds of a bygone era which was itself experiencing a mythic story of a bygone age. Filmed in an elegantly Baroque theater, with good use of side boxes for the actors and singers and a narrow and not especially deep stage, one can almost imagine onself wafting back to the late 17th century. Les Arts Florissants have 30 years of playing together under the baton of William Christie, and that long lived unity of purpose and artistic intent pays off splendidly in one of the most chic displays of instrumental and choral virtuosity that's been captured in our new high-def era. As this era progresses, we'll not doubt be able to choose from even more version of Dido and Aeneas, but my hunch is you'd be hard pressed to find one more musically astute than this one no matter how many you try.

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

Dido and Aeneas is a generally quite fine looking Blu-ray, arriving from Harmonia Mundi in deluxe packaging with a good 1080i/AVC encoded transfer. While colors are quite muted throughout this production, tending toward sort of pale yellows and browns, all of the palette is clear and accurate looking, if not excessively saturated, something I lay at the feet of the actual source material (literally, in this instance, with regard to the costumes). The gigantic theater in which this was taped is also quite dark a lot of the time. While contrast and black levels are good to excellent, some of the stage lighting effects leave a bit to be desired, with a somewhat wan look to several of the singers. Close ups reveal a wealth of detail, from the fine beadwork on costumes to Dido's somewhat unkempt hair. There is some brief artifacting on the ropes the sailors climb, as well as some of the busier closeknit costumes.

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

Dido and Aeneas' superb DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix is a marvel to listen to, especially since it so beautifully reproduces the elegant playing and especially choral singing of Les Arts Florissants under the extremely capable direction of William Christie. This is a soundtrack that lives and breathes with noticeable nuance. All of the singing is superb, if tilted slightly toward the lower registers, but it's really the choral work and the brilliant orchestral accompaniment, notably by the wonderful continuo (something this shares with the Royal Opera House Dido), which elevates this soundtrack to 10 status. Directionality is fine and surround channels ably demonstrate Purcell's often astonishing antiphonal vocal work. Lines weave in and out of the surround channels with thrilling precision and most listeners should be completely transported by this offering. The PCM 2.0 folddown sounds just fine, though I found it too massed sounding at times, without the breathing room and hall ambience that the 5.1 mix provides.

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras

 

A 23 minute featurette called A Vision of Dido and Aeneas offers Christie doing a pretty fair job speaking in French and Warner sticking resolutely to English as they describe their individual histories with the project and the history of the background of the opera itself. There's also a rather elegant slipcase in this release, featuring an oversized, heavy stock insert booklet with information in three languages.

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

 

This release of Dido and Aeneas, hot on the heels of the Royal Opera House version, proves that classical music has hit its stride in the Blu-ray format. This is a wonderful production with some of the magnificent choral singing I've had the pleasure to hear recently. This version may appeal to purists a bit more than the Royal Opera House outing, but really, there's little to complain about for lovers of opera when we're offered such an abundance of treasures from which to choose.

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