Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

Camilla Tilling - Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas
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CD Details

Artist: Camilla Tilling
Composer: Henry Purcell
Conductor: Emmanuelle Haïm
Performer: Susan Graham
Performer: Ian Bostridge
Performer: David Daniels
Performer: Paul Agnew
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2004-02-10
Music Label: Virgin Veritas
Soundtracks:
  1. Overture
  2. Shake The Cloud From Off Your Brow
  3. Banish Sorrow, Banish Care
  4. Ah! Belinda, I Am Pressed With Torment
  5. Grief Increases By Concealing
  6. When Monarchs Unite, How Happy Their State
  7. Whence Could So Much Virtue Spring?
  8. Fear No Danger To Ensue
  9. See, Your Royal Guest Appears
  10. Cupid Only Throws The Dart
  11. If Not For Mine, For Empire's Sake
  12. To The Hills And The Vales
  13. The Triumphing Dance
  14. Wayward Sisters, You That Fright
  15. The Queen Of Carthage, Whom We Hate
  16. Ruined Ere The Set Of Sun? Ho Ho Ho!
  17. But Ere We This Perform
  18. In Our Deep Vaulted Cell
  19. Echo Dance Of Furies
  20. Ritornelle
  21. Thanks To These Lonesome Vales
  22. Oft She Visits This Lone Mountain
  23. Behold, Upon My Bending Spear
  24. Haste, Haste To Town
  25. Stay, Prince, And Hear Great Jove's Command
  26. Come Away, Fellow Sailors
  27. The Sailors' Dance
  28. See The Flags And Streamers Curling
  29. Our Next Motion
  30. Destruction's Our Delight
  31. The Witches' Dance
  32. Your Counsel All Is Urged In Vain
  33. Great Minds Against Themselves Conspire
  34. Thy Hand, Belinda; Darkness Shades Me
  35. When I Am Laid In Earth
  36. With Drooping Wings

Music reviews of Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

Music Review: Vigorous Playing Overshadows the Drama
Rating: 4 Stars

I am unable to jump on the bandwagon for this recording. It is indeed a must-listen ... fascinating from start to finish, but in the end the effectiveness of the drama is undermined by key choices.

The playing is monstrous in the sense of revelatory ... Haim brings forth accents, rhythms, and textures you didn't know were there. The score is alive with thumping, strumming, and ornament. You really won't want to miss this reading, but for me it's not the one I will return to for the sake of the story. More moving by far is Hogwood's with Bott, Kirkby, Baird (caviar casting as Dido, Belinda and the Second Woman!), Ainsley, Thomas, and Chance. Hogwood's instrumental profile is less robust and deluxe (he uses no winds as Haim and Jacobs do), but the musical lines are more clearly drawn and voices more true to character.

I love Susan Graham, and she certainly does wonders with the music here. Her breath control is enviable, her phrasing gorgeous, her ornamentaiton supple, though her attack less authentic than early music specialists. She wraps the music in velvet tones. But in the final confrontation she is all woman and no queen, which I think undercuts her tragedy: her "away! away!" is more desperate than determined. Her lament, though beautiful, makes less of an impression than most because her timbre is almost completely absorbed in the lower strings. Still, she does her reputation no discredit on this outing.

Aeneas's music lies a shade too low for a tenor, although most performances nowadays go with one. Bostridge's vocal impersonation is interesting but not convincing -- just too fussy for my taste, the word-pointing à la Fischer-Dieskau out of place for such a sparsely drawn role. He blows the one opportunity in this short opera to win sympathy for his character, the soliloquy in Act II after the Spirit's visit. John Mark Ainsley for Hogwood cuts a more honest figure throughout, evincing more feeling in just his melismatic "ah!" than Bostridge in the whole of the passage. The baritone Gerald Finley for Jacobs is better still.

The wayward sisters are not very witch-like in tone -- Felicity Palmer sounds more like a rival than a nemesis, and the witches were so attractive in tone I had to check that they weren't Belinda and 2nd Woman doubling roles! The echo in the echo chorus is barely noticeable. Eschewing the typical caricatures is certainly a valid interpretation, but in this performance where the playing is so strong and even outlandish, this restraint is a bit curious, one token of the dramatic weakness here. All the more bizarre that the "horrid music" that concludes the Echo Dance of the Furies should be teeming with haunted-house effects.

David Daniels certainly adds cachet as the Spirit, but he is less atmospheric than the proper British countertenors Michael Chance for Hogwood and Robin Blaze for Jacobs.

Some of the reasons this recording fails to bring off the drama are suggested above. Because of the boisterous playing, the vocal lines are less exposed and affecting and they fail to up the ante staked by the instrumentalists -- and how could they? Bostridge's overliterate interpretation stunts the drama, too. Vocal repeats by all performers have been carefully ornamented, always beguilingly but in rare cases it poses a distraction; ultimately the virtuosity is one more barrier between listeners and the emotional center of the opera.

Though instrumentally Haim provides atmosphere galore, she neglects similar vocal opportunities. "To the Hills and the Vales" at the end of Act I is just another romp, rather than an invitation. The ominous solo chorale by Belinda in Act II, "Oft she visits this lov'd mountain" is muddied by the oppressive strings. Both Haim and Hogwood seem to use stage machinery for the storm effects (Jacobs opts for recorded nature sounds!), but Hogwood does a better job of integrating it musically and dramatically.

The single most crippling factor dramatically is the obvious choice to have the chorus provide a detached commentary in an oversimplification of its role in Greek tragedy, rather than a sympathetic sounding-board. This detachment is apparent throughout, but never moreso than in the closing chorus, "With drooping wings" sung over Dido's grave. The omission of an instrumental ritornello (or repetition of the chorus as Jacobs offers) only makes the coldness more stark.

The word I keep returning to is drama ... this recording is exciting, incisive, vigorous ... but it fails to deliver the drama of a wronged woman, a betrayed heart, a noble queen, and the forces converging upon her.
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Description of Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

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This new, period instrument version of Purcell's wonderful, brief Dido and Aeneas shows up in a very crowded field. There are close to two dozen other versions available, many of them also historically informed. Here we have a dignified, beautifully sung reading, with instrumentalists performing with a similar sense of loveliness and reserve; indeed, the only time true overt emotionalism shows up is when the witches appear: Felicity Palmer is a nasty handful as the Sorceress. Susan Graham's Dido is elegant and, note-for-note, probably gives us among the best Didos on disc. Ian Bostridge's Aeneas is good without being outstanding; David Daniels and Paul Agnew make remarkable cameos. I prefer the performance led by René Jacobs or starring Janet Baker to this one for sheer drama, but you can't go wrong with Graham, et al, under Emmanuelle Haim's intensely musical leadership either. --Robert Levine

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