Dull, sleepy ‘Padlock’ gives way to dandy ‘Dido’

dido_047.jpg(Photo: Chicago Opera Theater)
By John von Rhein [Chicago Tribun, 16 February 2006]
Lillian Groag is back at Chicago Opera Theater, once more proving that old opera can, in the right hands, deliver a bracing shock of the new.
COT opened its season Wednesday night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance with the director’s inventive staging of two early English operasóHenry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” and Charles Dibdin’s “The Padlock.”