Dido and Aeneas, July 2024

Somerset Opera, The Museum of Somerset

A production of Henry Purcell’s masterpiece, Dido and Aeneas, for the 50th anniversary of Somerset Opera, situated inside the Museum of Somerset, which contains the astonishing Low Ham Mosaic. Dating from AD 350 and unearthed nearby in Somerset in the 1930s, the mosaic depicts the complete story of Dido and Aeneas in several scenes and is the oldest piece of narrative art in the UK.

The production framed Purcell’s evergreen opera in the context of the discovery of this mosaic, and as well as telling the story in a vivid and immediate way, was also an exploration of our fascination with myths and stories, and how we transmit those stories through time via culture and art (anchored in the text of Dido’s final lament, with her repeated calls of “remember me”). Portions of the mosaic (see left and bellow) were projected throughout the opera as part of the story, and characters responded to it as part of the show.

*** To find out more, read the programme notes here***

The chorus featured members who had performed in the first Somerset Opera production 50 years ago, and also 14 year old girls in their first ever opera, linking it back to the famous performance of this opera by Purcell in a girls school in 1889. The conductor, and principal cast were almost all drawn from those with local connections.

Direction and Design: Guido Martin-Brandis; Movement Consultant: Shona Morris; Producer: Helena Payne; Masks: Alexander McPherson; Production photographer: Edward J Felton. In collaborative partnership with The Museum of Somerset, The Taunton Sinfonietta, Pleasure Dome Theatre Company, supported by The Arts Council England.

Dido - Leila Zanette

Aeneas - Kieran Rayner

Belinda - Bethan Terry

Second Woman - Amy Carsen

Sorceress - Grace Lovelass

Sailor - Robert Felstead

First Witch - Stephanie Berner

Second Witch - Helena Payne

Spirits - Josephine Cresswell, Jane Anderson-Brown, Ellie Coton, Amy Down

Conductor and harpsichord - Noah Mosley

Ensemble - Taunton Sinfonietta

Reviews

Opera Now, Robert Thicknesse

★★★★

“It was genuinely joyous and impressive, by any standards – not just the ones you bring to 15-quid-a-ticket shows. They could easily have got away with a standard, smooth-edged performance of a piece often presented as cosily familiar, and it’s greatly to everyone’s credit that they dared to try something a little edgier. Nothing to really scare the horses, mind you, but a punchy, thought-through and properly tragic Dido – unafraid to look for humour and humanity in a piece of the most concentrated genius that is too often tossed off as a mimsy, mannered miniature.

There’s a real frisson in telling the story beside this local representation of it made when the tale was already ancient, a palpable feeling of vaulting ages, the archaic and ageless continuity, with Dido and co springing into physical life beside these pictures.

And Guido Martin Brandis’s fresh staging emphasised how very English Purcell and Tate’s version is too: that rained-off picnic, those pantomime witches, Belinda, for God’s sake. There was real human substance to characters who can feel one-dimensional: Bethan Terry’s sparky Belinda, nudging moody Dido (Leila Zanette) towards what she wants, and a rare Aeneas (Kieran Rayner) with a bit of charisma and sex-appeal. Sure, Purcell fast-forwards the love story, even by operatic standards, but this felt immediate, playful, true, and gave the piece a proper shape as the light-heartedness turns to tragedy and grief.

A couple of neat dramatic touches, too, with attention paid to Tate’s tightly-wound words: ‘Oft she visits this lone mountain’ delivered by Amy Carson as a premonition of disaster – that final line always sounds rather panicky to me – and this tricky moment then defused by Aeneas with an actual joke (you don’t get many of those in Dido) before he is waylaid by masked 'Macbethy' witches delivering the gods’ decree in creepy overlapping phrases.

That amateur chorus, Somerset Opera’s backbone, was terrifically good… well schooled by Martin-Brandis (and dance-consultant Shona Morris) to cover a lot of dramatic bases.

The young principals were admirable, musical, dramatic and characterful, with the elegant mezzo Ms. Zanette a really wonderful, big-voiced Dido, going from dignified but puppyish lovebird to her magnificent (but self-destroying) slighted fury with real conviction: richly sung and enacted, she is a magnetic performer. Watch out for her and this company: ambitions are high, this is a great new start.”

Pathé News Reel about the Low Ham Mosaic (1946)