Organization

Singer

Chloé De Backer

mezzo-soprano

Mezzo-soprano

Anna Wall

Second witch

Tenor

Yoann Dubruque

Aeneas

Romain Bockler

Fabien Hyon

Soprano

Daphne Touchais

Belinda

Chantal Santon Jeffery

Dido

Deborah Cachet

Choreographer

Anne Lopez

Lighting designer

Caty Olive

Costume designer

Alain Blanchot

Set designer

Mathieu Lorry-Dupuy

Stage director

Benoît Benichou

Conductor

Johannes Pramsohler

Arcal

Orchestra

Ensemble Diderot

English

Dido and Aeneas

Avignon

France

Opéra Grand Avignon

Reims

Opéra de Reims

Paris

Quimper

Théâtre de Cornouaille

Public

French

Approved

The project, by Catherine Kollen
Who are these witches who work for the loss of Dido, oppressed between her duty as Queen and her feelings of love for Aeneas? And this “Spirit” who reminds Aeneas of his destiny to go and build the new Rome?

Intrigued by the construction that Purcell wanted to mirror the terrestrial world and the world of evil voices, inspired by the chorus "great souls conspire against themselves" , this show will plunge into the heart of the contradictions inherent in every human being, in this work whose conciseness generates a density which leaves dazzled, weeping with the choir of angels the fall of Dido.

The visions that each era invents for the invisible forces that guide our behavior will be put into perspective:
-The gods in Virgil's Aeneid , with a backcombing of jealous goddesses (Juno against Venus) which precipitates Dido's fate.
-The English imagination of witches , added by the librettist Purcell, inspired by Shakespeare.
-The complex depth of the human psyche explored in our time with the role that non-conscious or repressed feelings play in what happens to us.

The cave is a good illustration of this superposition of visions : sheltering the loves of Aeneas and Dido with Virgil, it becomes the den of witches with Purcell, while we will play with its baroque symbol of mental space.

With a scenography all in tulles inspired by Robert Irwin, costumes designed according to a parallel between Elisabeth I and Dido, recreating the English atmosphere specific to witches, and the choice that each role of the Court sings a role of the Night, it is 'will act to cast light and shade on the play between the different forces that inhabit us and to explore how this leads to what happens to us, from integration to disintegration, from repression to devouring ...

Likewise, the choir has a pivotal role in the work, and will be worked on according to the theme of chimeras, in the sense of Antiquity: taking one's desires for realities . Thus, in the same distorted relation to reality, the chimeras born of desires summon fears , twin machinist sisters of a macabre dance between heroism and death .

A prologue has been reconstructed, inspired by that of the original libretto of Dido & Aeneas , of the descent into hell of Aeneas told by Virgil, Ovid and Shakespeare, highlighting the role of song and writing as transcendence and edification of the dead among the living.

All the lights, costumes and scenography will play on opacity and transparency, but also translucency and blindness, the blurring of reality and imagination, memory and erasure .

Dido and Aeneas by Purcell, From (2020/2022), Directed by Benoît Benichou,, Conductor Johannes Pramsohler, Théâtre de Cornouaille, Quimper, France

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

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Program, About & Synopsis

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