Musicals a difficult challenge

Jun 18 2007 By Melissa Jordan, The Evening Chronicle

Dido and Aeneas/Les Noces, Opera North, Newcastle Theatre Royal

Opera North have created bold productions of two less well-known musical dramas, Stravinsky's Les Noces and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas - two compositions that strongly contrast, but nevertheless have the same theme of love and partnership.

Les Noces is a work that is not easy to label, being something halfway between an opera and a contemporary dance. A cast of singers and musicians took centre stage, but were fenced in by a ring of human silhouettes outside of which a troupe of dancers moved.

This juxtaposition of the singers and dancers left me scratching my head and wondering what Les Noces was meant to be.

The words were sung in Russian, and without the aid of a translation, the plot was opaque. It apparently followed traditional Russian marriage customs, although if this is so the accompanying interpretive dance suggested that Russians do a lot of fighting at their weddings.

The dancers tussled with each other, sometimes playfully, sometimes very aggressively, and their dance was a challenging interpretation of Stravinsky's stark and jagged score. It was perhaps a performance for serious fans of Stravinsky only.

Even though Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas was written some 200 years before Les Noces, it was far more accessible. It did have something in common in that it is about a marriage of sorts - the doomed partnership between Trojan prince Aeneas and Dido, the Queen of Carthage.

Aeneas arrives on the shores of the kingdom after fleeing the Trojan War, and immediately starts a love affair with the unhappy Dido.

This brief glimmer of contentment is cruelly snatched away when a witch tricks Aeneas into believing that the gods demand he leave Carthage. Dido is left heartbroken.

In this piece, the plain costumes and shadowy moonlit staging of Les Noces made a reappearance, but I felt the rich Baroque music would have been better reflected by more sumptuous costumes and scenery. Nevertheless, the harpsichord-laden melodies were delightful and Susan Bickley's performance as Dido was captivating - her voice was beautiful, melodious, and I missed it whenever she was off stage.