Bewitched by her love

Fear and mistrust push Dido to reject Aeneas’s love in a version that utilises the musicians as actors, says Nicki ffrench Davis.

WITH opera back on the Cork Opera House autumn-winter programme, a successful in-house show first produced in the spring returns. An exciting version of Purcell’s small but perfectly-formed Dido and Aeneas benefits from a musical re-imagining and a deft psychological re-appraisal. It is the brainchild of conductor John O’Brien.

With each of the four singers playing at least two parts, the characters become more complex and the story becomes universal. “I had done a version of Dido a few years ago,” says O’Brien, “and I noticed how Dido and the Sorceress could be seen as two sides of the same person, with the Sorceress as Dido’s alter-ego. It makes the whole story quite Freudian; she sabotages her own happiness. It’s about a woman who has come out of a loving relationship, her husband has died and she is feeling guilty, and then, suddenly, this hot young thing arrives on the scene but she doesn’t trust his love. She pushes him too far, too soon, and kills it — the same way that so many people sabotage their own relationships.”