Customer Reviews

Purcell:Dido & Aeneas

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the recording I grew up on in the 1950s. My father played the harpsichord along with the record. I will always treasure the memory of his playing those beautiful open chords in Dido's lament. Kirstin Flagstad's performance is unmatched. This is a true sentimental favorite, and any other rendition of the opera sounds tinny and rushed to me.

Flagstad sings beautifully, and this is a charming, if rather quaint, production. It is done in true Baroque style and is genuinely appealing, except for the rather stodgy tenor. But who cares?

SOURCE: Studio recording made at Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London, on March 15, 27 and 28, 1952. Producer: Walter Legge.

SOUND: In 1952, EMI's mono recording equipment and skills represented the state of the sonic art. Although I have heard this particular digital re-mastering only once, my impression is that unlike some examples of EMI sound engineering in the mid-1990s, this one fairly and respectfully reproduces the original fine sound.

CAST: Dido, Queen of Carthage - Kirsten Flagstad (soprano); Aeneas, Trojan hero destined to recreate a greater Troy in Rome - Thomas Hemsley (baritone); Belinda, Dido's handmaiden and friend / Second Lady in Dido's court / Attendant spirit disguised as Mercury - Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (soprano); First Lady in Dido's court - Eilidh McNab (soprano); Sorceress - Arda Mandikian (mezzo soprano); First Witch - Sheila Rex (soprano); Second Witch - Anna Pollak (soprano); Sailor - David Lloyd (tenor).

CONDUCTOR: Geraint Jones with The Mermaid Orchestra and Singers.

TEXT: "Dido and Aeneas" is loosely based on Vergil's "Aeneid," a completely artificial epic composed to boast about the origins of Rome and to flatter the ego of Augustus Caesar. It succeeded splendidly in both undertakings. In 1678, Nahum Tate, who would eventually become poet laureate of England took up the tale in his play "Brutus in Alba", with considerably less success. Out of Vergil and his own play, Tate cobbled together the libretto of "Dido and Aeneas." (See the comment below.)

The opera seems to have been first presented privately at a girls' school in 1689 (or maybe in 1690.) The first public performance was offered in 1704, after which it faded away more or less rapidly. "Dido's" modern performance history dates from a revival by London's Royal College of Music in 1895. There is no authentic version of the libretto. The oldest copies show the acts in varying arrangements. There once were both a prologue and an epilogue which Purcell may or may not have set to music.

As far as I can gather, the musical score can be traced no farther back than an adaptation presented in the 18th Century. Even so, it is not complete, so modern performing versions introduce passages from other works by Purcell.

COMMENTARY: This recording of "Dido and Aeneas" bears with it a gem of opera lore. Herewith the tale: In 1950, the British actor Bernard Miles, best known to North Americans as the kidnapper in the second version of Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much," having created the Mermaid Theater Group, conceived the eccentric notion of presenting Purcell's dusty old opera. He sought out the best-known soprano in the world to sing in it. He sent her a contract, which she signed in the presence of no less a personage than Wilhelm Furtwängler, that bound her to twenty performances in return for which she would be rewarded with her daily requirement of good English beer. You may swallow that story or not, as you please, but Kirsten Flagstad did sing two runs of "Dido" for the Mermaid, the first in 1951. In fact, it was as Dido at the Mermaid in 1953 that she gave her final stage performance.

In 1951, Flagstad was 56 years old. Her Belinda during that first run was the 64 year-old Maggie Teyte. When EMI's great producer Walter Legge decided to record the opera in 1952, he brought over the Mermaid cast, but he placed Flagstad's friend and his soon-to-be wife, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in the role of Belinda and in two other small parts.

The Good Grey English Magazine, The Gramophone, describes "Dido and Aeneas" as "baroque opera's most recorded work." One Gramophone reviewer even boasted (or maybe moaned) that in 1995 he listened to twenty-two "Didos" from a single collection. A quick glance at the Gramophone's archives discloses reviews for no less than eighteen competing CD versions.

At this point, I must disclose my bias. Baroque opera in general bores me and I regard "Dido and Aeneas" as a more than usually dull baroque opera. Having suffered the trauma of actually performing in a production of the thing, I cannot imagine any reason for me to waste a second of my time listening to it--save for the wonderful, magical presence of Flagstad and Schwarzkopf.

I readily accept that I am in the minority on this point. I found it particularly interesting to surf through those eighteen "Dido" reviews in the Gramophone. As the acknowledged--by them, anyway--greatest of all English operas, British reviewers are not only possessive toward it, but also very, very British about it. For example, when I listened to it yesterday, I was struck by the excellent English diction of the cast, which included a Norwegian, a German and a Greek. One Gramophone reviewer, on the other hand, sniffed dismissively at what he perceived as accents that were "all clear and `good' but unmistakably foreign," i.e., non-English English. As a North American, I don't find this a shocking fault. There is also an unstated but very much present implication that the presence of big-name opera singers is a bit much, not very English, don't you know.

On the matter of style, it will be obvious that a recording from 1952 will fail the standards of those who have bought into the faddish piffle of period performance practices and instruments. Such people, the "authenticists" in The Gramophone's happy verbalism, will find this "Dido" too slow, too warm, too sonorous--and, I fear, too well-sung.

Those willing to trust their own ears rather than the current paradigm will find excellent work from Flagstad, Schwarzkopf and from the Greek mezzo-soprano Arda Mandikian (who would record the same role seven years later with Claire Watson and Peter Pears) as the Sorceress. The Aeneas, a rather constipated-sounding baritone named Thomas Hemsley is, like most who take up the thankless role, a complete waste of space. (How the man came to be playing Beckmesser at Bayreuth less than a decade later completely baffles to me.) The tenor in the small role of the Sailor isn't bad and would have been a far better Aeneas. The remainder of the cast and the chorus are pretty good--as is the pick-up band calling itself The Mermaid Orchestra, despite the ignominy of their modern instruments.

I simply can't bring myself to award five stars to any performance of "Dido and Aeneas," but as far as I'm concerned, this is the best performance anyone will ever find on CD. Four stars.

Kirsten Flagstad's old-school style moves me, and "When I Am Laid in Earth" just breaks my heart. This recording of Purcell's short opera can't help but show its age, but that's half its charm. Listen to some samples and you'll see what I mean.