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Acteon

Acteon     Paul Agnew
Diane      Sophie Daneman
Junon      Mhairi Lawson
Arthebuze  Micaela Haslam
Hyale      Melanie Marshall
Daphne     Caroline Ashton

Dido

Dido       Katarina Karneus
Aeneas     William Dazeley
Belinda    Sophie Daneman
Sorceress  Paul Agnew
Witches    Micaela Haslam, Melanie Marshall
Spirit     Caroline Ashton
Sailor     Andew King

St James's Baroque Players, St James's Singers

Conductor  Ivor Bolton

This would have been a clever double bill if the Early Opera Company hadn't
done it a month ago. Although the St James's Players made Acteon sound
exciting in places, I wouldn't normally go very far to hear it. Certainly
not across London with a tube strike on. But I would spend hours in the
dark on the Northern Line to hear Katerina Karneus sing Dido.

When Karneus won the 1995 Cardiff Singer of the World competition, one
comment, with which I think I agreed at the time, was that she stood out in
a thin field because of her obvious intelligence, adaptability and good
technique. (I was probably more awed by the Ferrier-class diaphragm of the
soprano from St Petersberg.) Karneus hasn't been all that much in evidence
since, according to an interview in Time Out, because she was committed to
sing a comparatively small roles solidly  for the next three years and she
decided to keep her commitments. I've seen her only as one of the shop
assistants in Der Silbersee.

Keeping to her plans has obviously paid off. She's now an old-fashioned
(1970s style) true mezzo of incredible power and intensity, and still
showing the same intelligence and control. The contrast in the impact she
made with that of everyone else on the platform made me realise how little
music Dido has, and how amazing what she does have can be.  (Sophie
Daneman, a delicate French-style soprano came over as a warbly and weedy
Belinda.)

One slightly strange thing was that, at the back of St Johns, I could
clearly hear Karneus taking breaths. Maybe she has a cold, though I don't
think there was any other evidence of that. She certainly wasn't amplified,
though the concert was recorded. At least, if there was amplification, they
should do it like that everywhere. I think I had the benefit of one of
those church acoustics. But Karneus had intensity as well as thoroughly
controlled volume.

Another, smaller, high point of the evening was Paul Agnew as the
sorceress. This casting was presumably forced on the performance by a very
small ensemble. They had two countertenors who, as with the EOC, were very
butch nymphs of Diana, but the sorceress is in the wrong place for a
counter-tenor. A tenor witch is I think anachronistic -- Purcell's witch of
Endor is a contralto -- but funny. Agnew wasn't very frightening, but was
suitably theatrical. I also find it amusing that a singer who looks so much
like a French parody of an English schoolboy, minus the red hair and
freckles, sings (to these English ears) in such an impeccable French style.

It was also lovely to hear the little passage between "Pursue thy conquest,
Love" and "To the woods and the vales" played solo, magically, on the
theorbo.

And isn't the row one of the great realistic scenes in opera?