‘Dido & Belinda’

A collaboration between King’s College London’s Department of Music and Helios Collective, supported by the Principal’s Fund, the Arts & Humanities Research Institute and the Cultural Institute at King’s

‘Dido & Belinda’ – Why, how, and who?

Classical musicians may be the only Western artists still trained to believe that their job is to reproduce the practices and intentions of the dead, as faithfully as possible, for ever. This is hardly an environment in which artistic creativity can flourish. It is not difficult to show that the traditional justifications for denying significant agency to performers are historically and ethically ill-founded (on this, see “What’s Wrong with Classical Music?” or in more depth, Challenging Performance: Classical Music Performance Norms and How to Escape Them). So there seems every reason to encourage performers to engage much more imaginatively with composers’ scores. Among many other benefits, this removes the conflict characteristic of opera production between the interpretative strategies of those directing on the stage and in the pit. Our ‘Dido & Belinda’ has emerged from a cooperation founded on this approach, where both stage and music directors understand Purcell’s ‘Dido & Aeneas’ score as a starting-point for interrelated critical thought focusing on dilemmas that matter today.

There seems every reason to encourage performers to engage much more imaginatively with composers’ scores.

So how might a well-known opera make new sense, not just on stage but also by bringing staging and musical performance into interpretative alignment, so that both tell the same story?

We agreed from the start that the most loving relationship in ‘Dido & Aeneas’ is that between Dido and Belinda. Aeneas appears so briefly that it’s hardly plausible that Dido would kill herself for losing him. Of course, if you know Virgil’s story, you understand ‘Dido & Aeneas’ as shorthand for much more; but few do nowadays. So how can the opera make sense for us? What can we learn from it that is truly relevant to our own world?

Starting from Dido and Belinda as lovers, however, the other details of the plot fall intriguingly into place. Aeneas is a rich kid with his own yacht and laddish crew: Dido is his prize, a star model with whom he can dazzle paparazzi. For the world at large (represented, as ever, by the chorus) no more perfect celebrity marriage could be imagined. Dido and Belinda feel constrained to keep their love secret, while looking for a way out of this absurd social world. So Belinda’s extravagant praise of Aeneas’s manliness in Act I is bitingly sarcastic. In Act 2, Dido and Belinda conspire with the sorceress and witches to get rid of Aeneas and to cover up their own escape. Belinda, disguised as a prostitute in Act 3, seduces Aeneas while Dido films them to shame him through publicity, forcing his disgraced departure. In the final act, Dido and Belinda concoct a fake suicide note (‘Dido’s lament’) which the chorus believe. Dido and Belinda fake Dido’s death before they elope with the help of the witches to live, we trust, happily ever after in media-free obscurity.

There is an ethical obligation to encourage performer creativity, to allow it to flourish, to find out what new kinds of artworks can emerge from these extraordinary musical scores.

The music then is played and sung in a manner that supports this reading of the text. While our ideal was to enable the performers to reinterpret the score themselves so as to make the most convincing musical and dramatic sense in the moment of performance, due to constraints of rehearsal time we agreed that some changes could effectively be made to the score before the first rehearsal, including re-harmonising choruses, re-ordering songs, and adjusting the orchestration and musical style. Conductor/composer Leo Geyer therefore created a new score, not to be used as gospel in rehearsals but rather as a starting point for discussion. Throughout the rehearsal process the entire cast participated in further modifications to the score, allowing the music to develop organically in tandem with the dramatic interpretation. Our alterations include subtle changes to phrasing, dynamics and articulation, as well as more radical forms of “compositional transformation” including rhythmic variations, extending the harmonic language, and decorating melodies. Collaboratively, we have re-imagined almost every aspect of the music except for the notes themselves. And yet, as Leo says, “in my mind the music is still undoubtedly Purcell’s”.

This is the kind of creative freedom that performers have every right to expect, we argue. Art should challenge, not just comfort. The composer died 300 years ago: he is not harmed; his score (or what survives of his score) is always available for any other kind of interpretation. Performers suffer, every bit as much as actors or other performance artists, from being prevented, by convention and by the policing of critics and others, from behaving as creative artists. And so do audiences, from being denied a far greater range of performances of these scores than they are allowed at present. There is thus an ethical obligation to encourage performer creativity, to allow it to flourish, to find out what new kinds of artworks can emerge from these extraordinary musical scores.

Synopsis

Part I: The Court

It’s London fashion week, and Dido, a top model born into the Carthage fashion label, is now the face of the family brand. We find her struggling with the pressure, media attention and above all her inner turmoil at seeing Aeneas, who expects to marry her to secure his elite social status. Dido looks for comfort in her lover Belinda, but Aeneas soon appears. The proposed marriage appears to be the ideal match between two celebrities and is feted by all. Dido and Belinda resolve to take a different path and, while Aeneas and his posse celebrate the forthcoming marriage, they escape to find help.

Part II: The Club

Dido and Belinda find themselves in a different world – a downtown club that fizzes with liberated female power, freedom and energy. Dido summons up the courage to ask them for help to get rid of Aeneas’s unwanted attention, and the Sorceress vows to help them both. Before her plan is put into action she and the witches test the trustworthiness of the two lovers.

Part III: The Woods

Dazed and confused, Dido and Belinda wake to find themselves in the woods. They put on disguises as Aeneas interrupts his hunt for foxes (and women). Dido and Belinda watch as he stalks his prey, and Belinda holds Dido back before she reveals herself prematurely. The witches appear and conjure up a storm to stall Aeneas. Belinda, now in disguise as the prostitute Mercury, seduces Aeneas, which Dido catches on camera. The humiliated Aeneas is left to curse his own misfortune and promises to leave in the morning.

Part IV: The Dock

Aeneas’s drunk sailors sing and dance the night away at the dock while the Witches and the Sorceress put the last part of the plan into action. They resolve to create a storm to sink Aeneas’s ship, and then in a frenzy of bloodthirsty violence beat the drunken sailors to near-unconsciousness to punish them for their misogyny. Dido calls a press conference, and Aeneas returns to plead with Dido to take him back. Dido feigns sadness but commands him to go. As the press leave, Dido and Belinda bring the plan to its conclusion and write Dido’s suicide note. They then stage her death, and her note is read to her friends who express their sorrow. The witches reappear, in disguise, to “take care” of the body and, as the chorus depart weeping, Dido and Belinda escape to a new life of anonymity. (In the (unfilmed) covers’ performance, directed by Robert Hersey, however, the witches treacherously slit Dido’s throat.)

Watch ‘Dido & Belinda’

Cast and Crew

Principals

• Dido – Camilla Bull
• Belinda – Isolde Roxby
• Aeneas – Samuel Pantcheff
• 2nd Woman – Sophie Gallagher
• Sorceress – Lily Papaioannou
• 1st Witch – Charlotte North
• 2nd Witch – Catrin Woodruff

Chorus & Covers

• Madeleine Joyce (Dido), Jenny Begley (Belinda), Guy Withers (Aeneas), Grainne Gillis (Sorceress), Rebecca Hardwick (2nd Woman), Emma Newman-Young (1st Witch), Kathleen Green (2nd Witch)
• Olivia Bell, Matthew Duncan, Joan Munoz, & Callum Speed (Sailors)

Orchestra

• Leader Philipa Mo
• Violin I – Clarice Rarity, Rachel Gorman
• Violin II – Tim Rathbone, Maria Fiore Mazzarini
• Viola – Mark Gibbs, Elin Parry
• Continuo Cello – Philip Collingham
• Tutti Cello – Lucy Railton
• Double Bass – Toby Hughes
• Theorbo – Arngeir Hauksson
• Keyboards – William Cole (Cover: Bertie Baigent)

Production team

• Director – Ella Marchment
• Composer/Conductor – Leo Geyer
• Asst. Director – Robert Hersey
• Asst. & Cover Conductor – William Cole
• Movement Director – Simeon John-Wake
• Designer – Frances Bradshaw
• Costume Supervisor – Emily Adamson
• Lighting Designer – Robert Youngson
• Dramaturg – Daniel Leech-Wilkinson
• Stage Manager – Beatrice Wallbank
• Asst. Stage Manager – Becky Peskett
• Producer – Maggie Schroeder

Watch ‘Dido & Belinda’

If you’d like to know how audiences and performers reacted…

See Feedback from audiences (pdf))

And Feedback from performers (pdf))