ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 20, 1996 TAG: 9601230051
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B7 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: OPERA REVIEW
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO ROANOKE TIMES
"Dido and Aeneas" is a bright spot amid this winter's snow and floods. Opera Roanoke's first foray into the baroque era, though not a lavish production, is worth venturing out into the cold. Friday night's premiere at Roanoke College's Olin Hall will be followed by one other performance tonight.
General director Craig Fields' gamble in straying off the well-beaten path of classical- and romantic-era warhorses paid off, at least if you're tired of the same old thing.
Henry Purcell's great English opera receives few productions by smaller companies, which is ironic because its smaller scale makes it just right for companies that don't have tens of thousands of dollars to throw around.
This midwinter show is the "extra" opera in Opera Roanoke's season this year. No stars were imported from New York City or elsewhere, and the cast of area singers does just fine without them, thanks.
Mezzo Patricia O'Brien Campbell of Lynchburg sang the role of the tragic Carthaginian queen Dido. Bass-baritone Wayne Kompelien, familiar to Roanoke audiences, does the role of the Trojan wanderer Aeneas, whose departure breaks Dido's heart and triggers her suicide.
The show's look is simple and classical. Simon Lashford's stripped-down set, with its weird towering columns and backlit scrim, is striking, as are the graceful Mediterranean costumes. A small ballet company dances throughout the opera, adding to the impression of sunlit paganism.
The string orchestra in the pit is on the same modest scale and is augmented with harpsichord and lutenists, the last of which are miked and slightly amplified. The chorus is dressed in black and placed antiphonally on both sides of the stage.
The chorus sounded rough in places, with some bad entrances and some mistakes that were apparently the result of being separated into two groups that evidently had trouble hearing each other.
Don't come to this show expecting the kind of dramatic realism that's the rule in such operas as "Carmen" or "La Boheme" or even "The Marriage of Figaro." In baroque opera, the gestures and movement are more stylized. More of the communication is left to the music and less to modern acting techniques.
And it is the music that makes this show worth it. Henry Purcell is deferred to, almost automatically, as the greatest composer England has produced, but this is textbook knowledge for most modern audiences who don't have the chance to hear him at length. The music Purcell wrote for this tragedy is among the most powerful he created, with a grandeur and a nobility and a pathos that don't require 110 players in the pit.
It was most obvious Friday night in Dido's great aria "When I am Laid in Earth," which Patricia Campbell did full justice to. This great lament for soprano and chorus is one of opera's most moving numbers and is seven minutes of the greatest music ever written by an English composer. After Dido's death, the chorus processes solemnly on stage, dropping flower petals on her body as they pass in a simple but effective gesture.
Rhonda Short did a good job as the Sorceress, a touch added by Purcell's librettist Nahum Tate to the original story, with suitably creepy help from her assistant witches Marianne Sandborg and Amanda Fields. The cast got several curtain calls and a few shouts of bravo.
Seth Williamson produces feature news stories and a classical music program on public radio station WVTF (89.1 FM) in Roanoke.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines Type first letter of feature OR type help for list of commands FIND S-DB DB OPT SS WRD QUIT QUIT Save options? YES NO GROUP YOU'VE SELECTED: QUIT NO login: cby CNB