by Kevin McLaughlin

Some operas overwhelm us with spectacle, others with sheer length. Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, first performed in the late 1680s, does neither. Barely an hour long, it holds a world of feeling — new love, dark magic, and nobility in death.

On Friday evening, October 3 at Greystone Hall in Akron, Apollo’s Fire gave the work youthful resonance by returning it to Purcell’s premiere setting, a London boarding school for girls. Jeannette Sorrell’s direction added a Shakespearean pulse — brisk, lively, and human. The performance opened with the chaconne from Purcell’s King Arthur, an elegant and radiant overture that set the evening’s tone.

Sorrell’s newly written prologue replaced Purcell’s lost original and set the scene as a school play that turns suddenly real — a nod to the opera’s first performances by students and to the scale of its story. Her approach emulated the fast-moving style of seventeenth-century English theater, when audiences stood at the players’ feet and tragedy mingled with laughter. [Read more…]