Dido/Sorceress  Della Jones
Aeneas          Jeremy Huw Williams
Belinda         Yvonne Barclay
Second woman    Jacqueline Varsey
First witch     Fiona Rose
Second witch    Johanna Byrne
Sailor          Peter Wedd
Spirit          James Huw Jeffries

Conductor       Howard Williams
Director        Tom Hawkes

English Bach Festival Baroque Orchestra, Singers and Dancers

My appalling brother Owen studied Dido (aka Dildo and Anus) for A-level,
and invented obscene words for all of it. My test of a performance is
whether I involuntarily remember my bro's travesties. I'm afraid this one
didn't pass.

Oddly enough, Dido is almost as much about the violent rejection of the
past as Victory over the sun, the Russian futurist opera from 1913
currently on at the Barbican. Seen in the immediate aftermath of the
Commonwealth and Restoration, Aeneas' willingness to abandon everything in
his past and present to found a new state seems politically suspect as well
as personally cruel. Dido is destroyed precisely because (in the Roman
scheme of things at least) as a noble woman she is the ultimate carrier of
continuity with the past. But Purcell's and our sympathy is entirely with
Dido, even if in modern terms Aeneas is a creep who is not worth dying of
grief for.

But while the smallish pit was sold out for the futurists, the audience was
rattling around at Sadler's Wells. The performances were not widely
publicized, and perhaps the prospect of Della Jones singing two roles was
too much.

Jones turned out to be in not bad vocal shape, and gave substantial and
effective performances in both roles. She seemed to find cackling as the
Sorceress easier, but had vocal as well as dramatic intensity in Ah,
Belinda and When I am laid in earth. The other singers were competent, not
particularly inspired, but a limp Aeneas doesn't do much harm. The chorus
was also competent, with a bit of fizz as the witches. The orchestra was
similarly workmanlike, not quite getting the sensuality of the music but
keeping it sprightly.

The production was previously on at Covent Garden. (I'm not sure whether it
was part of the English Bach Festival then as well.) It looked gorgeous,
dark and Rubensesque, a reminder that Dido belongs to the baroque in
literature and art as well as (loosely) in music. But somehow good taste
and historical accuracy kept it dull.

What was really worth avoiding was the choreographed version of the Water
Music in the first half. I was quite enjoying the music, and wondering
whether they'd ditched the dancing altogether because we were four
movements into the first suite, when the curtain went up on eight dancers
in (again) very precise period court dress. The women wore wide hooped full
length dresses, so you couldn't see their feet. But the dances were
focussed on complicated footwork, so they looked like clockwork blancmanges
(something for the futurists maybe). They danced only the movements which
are formally named as dances, so there was an empty stage for some of the
time, and once three dancers standing around supposedly having an elegant
conversation.

The choreography was by the late Brenda Quirey. The programme includes a
note by her which explains all: baroque dancing replicates the rhythm of
hearbeats in footwork and breathing in the movements of the upper body, and
aims to create beautiful patters on the ground and in the air. It is for
the dancers themselves, and the community of their friends. So far so good.
But everything went to pot when professional dancers rather than
aristocrats were allowed to perform these dances, and the end result was
the emotional excess and meretriciousness of romantic ballet.

Romantic ballet doesn't do much for me, but neither does decorous period
hopping and skipping by animated fondant puddings. Mark Morris works on the
same sort of theoretical basis, and produces the most amazingly moving and
interesting results, respecting humanity rather than good taste.