DIDO AND AENEAS

An Archival Reissue of The Boston Camerata’s 1979 recording, and digitally restored and remastered in 2015 by David Griesinger.

An opera perform’d at Mr. Josias Priest’s Boarding School
at Chelsey by Young Gentlewomen.

Music by Henry Purcell (1659-1695)

Words by Nahum Tate (1652-1715)

Direction: Joel Cohen

Dramatis Personae:

DIDO, Queen of Carthage D’Anna Fortunato
BELINDA, her sister Nancy Armstrong
AENEAS Mark Baker
SORCERESS Bruce Fithian
ENCHANTRESSES Sallie Gordon, Susan Klebanow
SECOND WOMAN Roberta Anderson
SPIRIT of the Sorceress (Mercury) Ken Fitch
SAILOR Joel Cohen

Dido’s train, Aeneas’ train, Fairies, Sailors:
Roberta Anderson, Nancy Armstrong, Sallie Gordon, Margaret Johnson, Susan Klebanow, sopranos
Ken Fitch, D’Anna Fortunato, Jane Shaw, Stephen Walton, altos
John Clarke, Bruce Fithian, David Griesinger, tenors
Mark Baker, Frank Farris, Charles Robert Stephens, basses

Daniel Stepner, Anthony Martin, violins
Laura Jeppesen, viola
Alison Fowle, viola da gamba
Fred Goldstein, violoncello
Tom Coleman, violone
Ken Roth, oboe
Nancy Joyce, flute and recorder
Joel Cohen, lute
John Gibbons, harpsichord

recording engineer: David Griesinger
recorded at Emmanuel Church, Boston

The libretto to Dido and Aeneas is available online at several locations, including http://opera.stanford.edu/iu/libretti/dido.html

Following is the original program note to the 1979 Harmonia Mundi Recording, the first “early instruments” Dido in recorded history, and a milestone in the Boston Camerata’s career.

Dido and Aeneas, Henry Purcell’s only true opera, is often treated as an isolated masterpiece, far removed from the extravagant world of French and Italian opera, and different from Purcell’s other theatre music.

Much of this modern critical view is quite obviously true. Purcell’s small-scale work is different in scope and intention from the elaborate spectacles of Versailles and Venice. Less than an hour in length, using reduced orchestral forces, the work was composed in all likelihood for a mixed cast of amateurs and professionals. The amateurs were the young gentlewomen of a boarding school in Chelsea, where the work was first performed, most likely in 1689. The pensionnaires of the school received instruction in dance from the headmaster, Mr. Josiah Priest, and the circumstances of the work’s inception go far towards explaining many of its peculiarities : extreme compression of action in an era when five and six hour spectacles were common, a moralizing and chastened version of the subject matter (at no point in Nahum Tale’s libretto does Dido cede physically to Aeneas; yet her seduction in a cave is an essential part of Vergil’s narrative) ; and lots and lots of dance music.

The conciseness and directness of Dido and Aeneas have appealed to contemporary sensibility ; this work is the only English opera composed prior to the twentieth century to be accepted in the modern repertoire. And it is one of the few baroque operas of any nation which is likely to be familiar to the non-specialist music lover.

If Dido, like so much of Purcell’s music, speaks directly to the needs of contemporary men and women, some of its power and impact has unfortunately been diluted by performance conventions drawn from the “grand opera” of the nineteenth century and applied in our own day to baroque music. Our intention in this performance is not to search for some kind of definitive (and unattainable) historical authenticity, but rather to recreate Dido and Aeneas using our experience of seventeenth century music – English and French masques, Lullian ballet, early Italian opera – as a general framework. We arrive thus at a different orchestral sound, other ideas about tempi, even unconventional thoughts about characterization (the two witches, for example, so often sung in our time by sinister operatic mezzo sopranos, are unquestionably intended as comic roles for light, adolescent voices).

By restoring the elements of masque, of ballet, even of comedy, to their true place in the work, the perceived architecture is altered: Dido and Aeneas is not a too-short romantic opera, obliging conductors and singers alike to stretch out tempos, to infuse short movements with alien weight and force. Purcell has already structured into his music, using the gestures and conventions of his own time, an infinitely rich variety of expression and feeling. Our goal as interpreters has not been to present an exercise in musical archaeology, but to rediscover with you, our listeners, the shapes and contours of a great musical masterpiece. The challenge of historical research is to render the past more alive, more immediate, and more meaningful.
Joel Cohen, 1979

MUSIC IN THE TEMPEST: PLAYING PURCELL DESPITE WINTER ADVERSITY

As the Music Director Emeritus begins writing this brief afterword, Boston and New England are currently (February 2015) nearly buried under seven feet of snow, accumulated over four storms, with yet more snow forecast in the coming days. And, O yes! it is bitterly cold.

What does the winter of 2015 have to do with a production of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas? The link with catastrophic weather has to do with the conditions under which this interpretation of Purcell’s masterpiece, was rehearsed and initially performed, during and just after the Great Storm of 1978.

Amazingly, given the terrible weather and the multi-day, near-shutdown of public services in the Boston area, the Boston Camerata’s pioneering project, the first known performances of this major work on early instruments, went onstage, in concert version, as scheduled, despite a shortened rehearsal period. How the première managed to come about, with snow everywhere, no public transportation, and even a ban on private automobiles in the Boston area, is quite a story.

Because the concert was held at Harvard’s Sanders Theater, near Harvard Square, many potential audience members were within walking distance of the event. And a surprising number of Camerata “regulars” in fact turned out. The Harvard administration, concerned about cabin fever among its young, encouraged students to attend (this was at a time in American history when many of student age appreciated and supported classical music in general, and early music in particular). Harvard then scheduled a post-Dido dance the following evening. For the concert, the harpsichord, whose case looked something like a coffin, was transported to Sanders in a station wagon by a retired Episcopal priest, the late Roger Geffen. He had resumed his ecclesiastical look and white collar for the occasion (“Go on right through, father,” said the compassionate Irish cop, having stopped the wagon and its “corpse” at the checkpoint). The hardy Aeneas, baritone Mark Baker, actually walked from Marblehead, and delivered his part undaunted, or perhaps primed, by his extensive workout.

It was hard to do, but it was exhilarating beyond words.

This recording, made post-storm at Boston’s Emmanuel Church, with David Griesinger as engineer, is a memento of that effort. Most of us were young and green, and on this old tape our inexperience shows in places. But a great deal of energy and goodwill went into that pioneering product. Originally scheduled as a release on Nonesuch, but withdrawn from that label after the late Tracey Sterne’s abrupt departure, it was released about two years later, to much acclaim, by the French Harmonia Mundi label, just before Camerata sold out five shows of Dido at the Théatre de la Ville in Paris. That Paris week, too (with current Artistic Director Anne Azéma singing in the chorus), was an exhilarating highlight of Camerata’s long and ongoing love affair with French audiences.

It turns out, happily, that the energy and goodwill emanating from this first-of-its-kind Dido production have legs. We now pay homage, with this re-release, to Camerata’s once, present, and future Tonmeister-in-Residence, David Griesinger. Astonishingly, David declared to us one recent evening in 2014 that he had rediscovered in his archive the original, analog master tapes from the Emmanuel sessions, tapes once thought to be lost.

He further announced that he had gone through every edit point, removing the degraded, oozing splicing tape from joinup points, re-consolidating every moment with newer technology, and then digitizing the whole. David’s restored and reconstituted recording is a wonderful and unexpected gift during this, Camerata’s sixtieth anniversary season, and we are delighted to share the fruits of his labors with our friends and supporters.

Thirty-six-odd winters have passed, some mild, and some turbulent, since this recording was made. And so we also wish to remember, with respect and enduring affection, the musicians heard here who, having braved the storms of life, are now at rest: Fred Goldstein, Nancy Joyce, Ken Fitch, Alison Fowle (a founding member of the original Camerata of the Museum of Fine Arts), Tom Coleman. The force and bounty of their work continues.

Joel Cohen
Amesbury and Paris
February, 2015

A CyberCentaur production, 2015
recording © and (p) The Boston Camerata, Inc.