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United States Various: Dawn Upshaw (soprano), Brentano Quartet / Serena Canon, Mark Steinberg (violins), Misha Amory (viola), Nina Lee (cello). Presented by San Francisco Performances, Herbst Theater, San Francisco, 12.1.2023. (HS)
Purcell (arr. Mark Steinberg) – ‘Oh let me weep’ from The Fairy Queen; Fantasia No.5 for Four Viols in B-flat main; Fantasia No.7 for Four Viols in C minor; ‘When I am laid in earth’ (‘Dido’s Lament’) from Dido and Aeneas
Matthew Locke – Suite No.2 for Four Viols in D minor
John Dowland (arr. Stephen Prutsman) – ‘Come again, sweet love doth now invite’, ‘Can she excuse my wrongs’, ‘Weep you no more, sad fountains’
Thomas Tomkins – ‘Alman’
William Byrd – ‘Though Amaryllis dance in green’
Robert Johnson – ‘The Witty Wanton’
Melinda Wagner (composer), Stephanie Fleischmann (librettist) – Dido Reimagined: A Response to Purcell’s Lament
Dido dies on the finish of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, however not earlier than singing one of many nice arias of late Renaissance/early Baroque opera, ‘When I am laid in earth’. It was violinist Mark Steinberg of the Brentano Quartet who prompt to soprano Dawn Upshaw that they get a recent composer and librettist to create an prolonged piece that lets Dido not solely stay however sing about it too.
The end result, Dido Reimagined, pairs music by Melinda Wagner with phrases by Stephanie Fleischmann in what Steinberg’s program word outlined as ‘something between monodrama and a song cycle.’ The piece debuted in 2022. Its West Coast premiere on Thursday at Herbst Hall started with songs, madrigals, arias and instrumental works from the identical century as Purcell’s opera, and wrapped up with ‘When I am laid in earth’ simply earlier than intermission.
That first half provided music that echoed themes of the Dido story, however the big selection of precise melodies contrasted with the customarily laborious parlando of the brand new piece’s strains for the soprano.
The live performance started with one other Purcell aria, ‘Oh let me weep’ from The Fairy Queen. It made an ideal appetizer, its lengthy strains foreshadowing related elements of the title aria that closed the primary half. The string quartet interspersed fantasias, dances and instrumental preparations by Steinberg of some madrigals by Matthew Locke, Thomas Tomkins, and Robert Johnson with a collection of vocal works by John Dowland and William Byrd.
Some of those made fascinating pairings. Purcell’s Fantasia No.5 for Four Viols in B-flat main led easily to the primary motion (‘Fantazie’) of Locke’s Suite No.2 for Four Viols in D minor. The Dowland track that adopted, ‘Come again, sweet love doth now invite’, had the candy scent of the Locke piece.
The Courante from the suite got here subsequent, pairing with the identical type of vigorous feeling as Dowland’s ‘Can she excuse my wrongs’. Byrd’s ‘Though Amaryllis dance in green’ echoes the enjoyable in ‘The Witty Wanton’ by Johnson, who wrote unique scores for Shakespeare.
By the time we arrived at Purcell once more, the straightforward glory of his writing and Upshaw’s clear, candy lyric supply made a satisfying finale. Upshaw and this quartet have a historical past of performing collectively, and their musical affinities had been obvious.
The historic Dido actually was a Phoenician queen. Her suicide as portrayed in Purcell, Virgil, Petrarch and Chaucer in all probability didn’t occur due to a ‘first’ love affair with Aeneas, since he wasn’t born till no less than 40 years after her.
In Fleischmann’s libretto for Dido Reimagined, fairly than take her personal life the heroine chooses to isolate herself on an island, and he or she will get there one way or the other by automobile or bus. The phrases paint an evocative world through which she turns into more and more one with nature. At the tip, she ‘dissolves into the sea’, because the libretto has it. The closing stanzas colorfully describe how all the weather of nature carry her spirit.
That ought to have been a powerful narrative for a composer. With its softly dissonant textures and harmonies, Wagner’s music does a nice job of scene-painting, however what’s lacking is one thing to hold the libretto’s phrases into equally arresting music for the soprano. The end result comes off like a film background rating – very a lot within the second, however these moments by no means fairly coalesce right into a musical assertion.
Harvey Steiman