United States Purcell, Dido & Aeneas: Soloists, Apollo’s Singers, Apollo’s Hearth / Jeannette Sorrell (music director and conductor). Greystone Corridor, Akron, 3.10.2025. (MSJ)

Some items fare nicely on recordings, however there are lots of that don’t actually come to life till you expertise them in particular person. Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is unquestionably one of many latter, significantly on this intelligent semi-staging by Jeannette Sorrell, music director of Apollo’s Hearth. As an alternative of creating any nod towards naturalistic stagecraft, Sorrell has her forged and refrain lean into the artificiality of the vanity, setting the opera as whether it is being carried out at Josias Priest’s Boarding College for Women in Chelsea, London in 1689, which can also be the earliest documented presentation of the opera.
The 4 ‘women’ who double within the smaller roles and the refrain opened the present with a witty spoken prologue written by Sorrell that explains the vanity, introduces the characters and hints the place the plot will go. By including this spoken prologue, borrowing some instrumental music from Purcell’s King Arthur and including an entr’acte of conventional sea shanties for the sailors, Sorrell was capable of flesh out the piece to night dimension, working Acts I and II as the primary a part of the present and an expanded Act III after an intermission. The motion occurred downstage and, when not singing, the refrain members sat in chairs onstage, donning costume items to grow to be witches or sailors as wanted. Sorrell assured her viewers that 1689 wasn’t as formal as 2025, and inspired individuals to applaud, cheer or hiss villains when moved – they usually did.
Aryssa Leigh Burrs was regal in presence and vocally wealthy as Dido, her lustrous sound giving the queen’s closing aria, ‘When I’m Laid in Earth’, an intense glow, justifying it because the fruits level the opera has been constructing towards from the very starting. Whereas her love curiosity, Aeneas, doesn’t have practically as a lot stage time as Dido, Edward Vogel made positive that the half registered with supple grandeur in his good-looking voice. Vogel returned elsewhere as a singing sailor, giving us a pleasant probability to savor his voice in a extra swaggering type.
Alternating between the assist function of Belinda, Dido’s lady-in-waiting, and numerous smaller components in addition to refrain, Andréa Walker was in all places however deserves the very best attainable reward for therefore utterly throwing herself into the components – every felt like a separate entity. Attempt as I’d, I may by no means catch her merely appearing. She turned every half and introduced vocal heat and style to Belinda, but she may completely snarl as one of many witches. Walker is a pressure to be reckoned with.
The witches have been a depraved delight, snapping, snarling and twisting of their each second, Walker and Kristine Caswelch whirling across the Sorceress, Cody Bowers. Casting a countertenor within the function was extremely efficient, Bowers’s supercharged voice and horny, subversive stage method offering its personal justification higher than librettist Nahum Tate’s slightly random unhealthy guys. Their writhing stage exercise, suitably hissed by the viewers after we bought over our preliminary dazzlement, was choreographed by Sorrell together with all different stage blocking. Julie Andrijewski choreographed the quite a few dances all through the opera, giving what can come throughout as a extra conceptual opera a real stage life. Caswelch additionally served successfully because the spirit who delivers the information of the curse to Aeneas and his sailors, setting the downward spiral in movement.
Talking of these sailors, the interpolated set of three sea shanties to open the third act was a superb concept, and the present had luxurious casting for these components. The primary and third songs, ‘Wellerman’ and ‘Go away Her Johnny, Go away Her’, featured baritone Sam Kreidenweis, who not solely has a horny voice and mastery of the type, he is aware of find out how to inform a narrative with out ever detracting from the music, a real unity of inventive abilities. Within the central track, ‘Downed & Drowned’, the gorgeous Michael Galvin took his bottomless bass voice about 5 fathoms deep to inform the story of the sailors who by no means made it again to port, aided by tenor Michael St. Peter on the longing chorus.
All through the opera, Sorrell labored as intently with the instrumental gamers because the singers, drawing everybody current into the energetic whirlwind of Purcell’s masterpiece, to triumphant impact. The refrain ‘No Stars Once more Shall Harm You’ from Purcell’s music for The Tempest was supplied as an encore. This semi-staged idea of Dido was so fast-moving and energetic, it’s arduous to think about a fully-staged model of the work higher capturing its spirit. Seeing it in Greystone Corridor in Akron – a former Masonic temple – intensified the sense of communing with a extra ornate previous. The viewers’s response was rapturous. The manufacturing proceeded to Chicago for performances over the weekend earlier than returning to northeast Ohio for the rest of the run.
Mark Sebastian Jordan
Featured Picture: The Witches Kristine Casswelch (left), Andréa Walker (proper) and the Sorceress Cody Walker (middle) © Freddy Fletcher/AF
Manufacturing:
Director – Jeannette Sorrel
Dance choreography – Julie Andrijeski.
Forged:
Dido – Aryssa Leigh Burrs
Belinda – Andréa Walker
Second Girl – Elora Kares
Aeneas – Edward Vogel
Sorceress – Cody Bowers
Witches – Andréa Walker, Kristine Caswelch
Spirit – Kristine Caswelch
Sailor – Edward Vogel