The balcony scene of Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet includes Juliet telling Romeo: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” Names matter if they need to stand out from the crowd. Putting some of them into a foreign tongue might be regarded as an example of smart marketing. But does Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique sound sophisticated? Or pretentious? When in 1986 a group of early-music enthusiasts in Oxford were in a hurry to find something suitable for their first concert, a countertenor suggested “the beans”, as a gently mocking caricature of such aficionados being sandal-wearing vegetarians. Whereupon the group’s founder, Robert Hollingworth, came up with the idea of turning the name into Italian. Thus I Fagiolini was born. Forty years later the group, whose early members included Roderick Williams, and its guiding spirit are still going strong. This concert, the third of four projects at Kings Place in London commemorating its 40th anniversary year, opened with an amuse-bouche of three items by Purcell, despite there being a Lully-inspired overture to start the opera.
Between the two vocal items came a purely instrumental piece, the Pavan in G minor, in which the sighing of the strings at the outset cast a pall of sadness, already presaging the main work, the many subtle shifts in rhythm and dynamics adding additional colour. The two contributions for one female and two male voices that bookended the Pavan, each centred around a ground bass, something of a calling-card for Purcell, were marked by florid writing and lyrical warmth.
So: was the performance of the main work full of beans? At times too much so. A semi-staging of this opera inevitably throws up challenges. I was less bothered by the absence of stage furniture (only one chair) and the modern costumes (garments in black-and-white for the supporting characters, with Dido wearing a colourful shift and Aeneas a two-tone jerkin). It was the unimaginative use of lighting that robbed this staging of any visual allure. No hint of bright Mediterranean sunlight, for instance, which would have been appropriate, if not for the grove in the middle of the Act 2 hunt, then most certainly for the harbour of Carthage in Act 3. The lightning effects accompanying the appearance of the sorceress and her entourage were more like damp squibs, though the half-lit performance space made its mark for the death of Dido in the final scene. There were occasional suggestions of dancing.
A minimalist interpretation can work. It doesn’t have to be what the English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir did earlier this month, when they staged their Dido and Aeneas underneath the hull of the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, dominating proceedings almost like a spectre of the Trojan fleet. But it requires a keen directorial eye for the moments of drama in the piece. A few sailor’s berets and comic noses for the witches, with little in the way of meaningful stage movement, were not enough.
The players who delivered the accompaniment were spread out along the back of the stage and on the left. Their sound, with the exception of the under-powered chitarrone or theorbo, was full and precise, the rhythms neatly sprung, the vigour of Purcell’s melodic inventiveness palpable. But I waited in vain for more dynamic flexibility, the kind of hushed stillness that almost makes you catch your breath, not least in the final lament, where the emotional power does not depend on big instrumental underpinning. We had lots of visual shade. Except in the music.
Not all of Purcell’s music is extant. The prologue, for instance, is completely lost, and the running time of well under an hour suggests a degree of missing development. One shouldn’t therefore wonder at the disparity in content: more material is given to Dido and indeed the sorceress than to the Prince of Troy himself, son of the goddess of beauty, Aphrodite. His most dramatic contribution comes in the forest scene where he is confronted by a false spirit claiming to be Jove, and which leads to his abandonment of Dido. Aeneas was sung by Frederick Long, heroic of voice and commanding in stature, displaying in the rich deeper reaches of his baritone register all the presentiments of disaster which are about to unfold.
Rowan Pierce’s fresh-toned Belinda was a delight. She was every inch the attentive handmaiden, relishing the high-lying soprano lines and articulating her own determination with ardour, finely echoed by the chorus. Katie Bray, replacing the advertised Julia Doyle, was a generally assured Dido. Her regal bearing was evident in her dark mezzo (but a diadem wouldn’t have come amiss) and the confidence with which she enunciated her words. I noted especially the neat placement of her end consonants as well as her excellent breath control. Her exasperation at, and impatience with, Aeneas in the final scene reflected her growing darker mood. And yet…I missed an earlier feeling of fragility, of vulnerability, signs that she is aware of the blows of Fate still to come. When it came to the most famous aria of all in this opera, her closing lament, I would have preferred a slightly slower tempo and, above all, greater dynamic shadings in order to bring out the entire grief that she feels at this point. The “Remember me” must have the same quality as Violetta’s farewell in La Traviata.
On her first entry Martha McLorinan, as the sorceress, didn’t quite have sufficient malice in the voice (more of a charmer, an enchantress), but later in the company of her coven of witches there was plenty of malevolent cackling. The supporting roles demonstrated their flexibility and agility by acting as the chorus, with two particularly fine moments: their staccato singing as witches, designed to completely unsettle and sow havoc, and their finely poised, a cappella delivery of the closing lines, “Keep here your watch and never part”.
What makes this work so powerful is the conflict between duty and passion, for which there can be no satisfying resolution. It is present in some of Dido’s first utterances, when she states, for instance, that “Peace and I are strangers grown”. Towards the end it is her “Earth and heaven conspire my fall” which tugs at the heartstrings. When you see a gun on the table in a Chekhov play, you know things will end badly. In Dido and Aeneas you can hear, feel, touch and taste the impending doom from the very first moment.
Alexander Hall
Music by Henry Purcell:
Mark her readily (Raise, raise the voice)
Pavan of four parts in G minor (King Arthur)
The sparrow and the gentle dove (From hardy Climes and dangerous Toils of War)
Dido and Aeneas
Opera in a prologue and three acts by Henry Purcell, to a libretto by Nahum Tate
Cast and production staff:
Dido – Katie Bray; Aeneas – Frederick Long; Belinda – Rowan Pierce; Sorceress – Martha MacLorinan; Elspeth Piggott – Second Woman/First Witch; Tania Murphy – Second Witch; Rory Carver – Sailor; Sam Gilliatt – Sailor; Persephone Gibbs (violin); Mika Takahashi (violin); Rachel Byrt (viola); Sarah McMahon (bass violin); Eligio Quinteiro (chitarrone/guitar); Catherine Pierron (harpsichord); Robert Hollingworth (organ/director)
Kings Place, London, 31 May 2026
Photos © Sally Anderson