Strong performances outshine staging distractions in Bella Voce’s “Dido”
It has taken Bella Voce 42 seasons to get there, but on Sunday afternoon the Chicago vocal ensemble presented its first-ever opera, Dido and Aeneas, as its season finale at a packed St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Evanston.
Henry Purcell’s stage masterpiece is the oldest opera still in the regular repertory, the most important English opera before those of Benjamin Britten. As such, the tragedy of the Carthaginian queen Dido, spurned by her lover, the Trojan hero Aeneas, gibes well with the artistic and historical focus director Andrew Lewis has maintained over the years with his responsive chamber singers and instrumental ensemble.
With splendid performances from Hannah De Priest as Dido and Nathalie Colas as her lady-in-waiting Belinda, and superbly stylish musical direction by Lewis, this Dido lent luster to the ensemble’s adventuresome track record in the early repertory.
Bella Voce hedged its bets by calling its Dido and Aeneas a “semi-staging”—a necessity more than a choice, given the cramped confines of the church space. Some of the efforts of stage director and Bella Voce chorus member Oliver Camacho to integrate the chorus of fairies, sailors and royal attendants into the Purcellian inaction might have passed muster in a much larger space.
But, as things stood, his inventions for the dance interludes proved all too busy, self-conscious, distracting and, finally, irritating.
Dressed in black, with long white sashes draped over their shoulders, the choristers’ campy hyperactivity undermined the drama at almost every turn. When they weren’t crouching or scampering across and behind a tiny platform in the altar area, they moved arms in stilted semaphore, mimicked the lovemaking of the titular duo and skulked on and off like silent-movie villains. Most awkwardly, they were forced to juggle their scores while singing, acting and hoisting music stands to clear the “stage” for the next mini-scene of Purcell’s foreshortened opera.
The very last scene, following Dido’s great lament, suggested what could have been had the staging aspired to a more dignified dramatic level: In a touching ritual-response to Purcell’s solemn music, mourners by turns laid white and black sashes over the vacant throne of their beloved, self-sacrificing monarch.
Having scored notable successes in prior local solo appearances with Music of the Baroque and Haymarket Opera, De Priest made a compelling, pointedly dramatic Dido. Dressed in a pastel Grecian robe accented in gold, her warm yet pure-voiced soprano was at one with the queen’s emotional trajectory, from foreboding to rapture to fury to infinite sorrow.
Dido’s interactions with her confidant Belinda were spot-on and the famous lament, “When I am laid in earth,” which De Priest delivered while walking slowly down the center aisle to the back of the nave, was altogether affecting.
The part of Belinda offers no such opportunities for vocal display but Colas fulfilled every musical requirement, her sweet, flexible soprano nicely contrasted in timbre with that of De Priest, entrancing in the duet “Fear no danger to ensue” with Allison Selby Cook singing the Second Woman.
Orna Arania brought a plummy voice to the Sorceress’ charming malevolence, and the walk-on characters were capably taken by Kimberly E. Jones and Nora Engonopoulos (Witches), Luke Lemmeier (Spirit) and Keith Murphy (Sailor).
The weak link was Eric Miranda as Aeneas, whose hesitant demeanor and bottled-sounding timbre hardly suggested a brave Trojan hero agonizing between love and military duty.
The fundamental heroes of the performance were Lewis and his zesty 17-member orchestra of period instrumentalists, who were rather unceremoniously crammed together to the left of the altar. The conductor tied the disparate musical elements together to form a flowing, beautifully balanced, rhythmically vital whole. His was a smoother, warmer sound than one normally hears from period bands in this repertory, and none the worse for that.
Brandon Acker brought similar engagement to his lute solos, so splendidly executed as to make him virtually a full-fledged cameo figure in the drama.
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