Thursday 31 July 2014

Festival of the Sound 2014 # 6: A Tragedy Concealed Within A Masque

I guess to start this post off, it helps to have some idea of what a "masque" is.  The term is so loose that it could perhaps best be described simply as an "entertainment", one which might include singing, dancing, recitations, poetry, spoken dialogue, elaborate sets -- the possibilities were truly endless.

On Wednesday night, a masque of sorts was presented at the Festival of the Sound by the Toronto Masque Theatre.  This certainly was not a historic re-creation of an authentic masque, as the entertainment was confined to music and the singers and players were in ordinary modern street clothes.  There was a slight nod to the masque convention of elaborate sets in the form of three pictorial banners hung at the back of the stage, depicting scenes relevant to the major musical work on offer.  Staging was mostly limited to the performers simply moving on and off the central stage area as required.  The programme was in fact designed as a tribute to the wonderful and diverse talent of Henry Purcell, the greatest of English Baroque composers.

In the first part, there was a well-planned sequence of instrumental and vocal movements from Purcell's theatre music.  Embedded in the middle of the sequence was the verse anthem Rejoice in the Lord alway, best-known of Purcell's numerous sacred works.  As director Larry Beckwith pointed out, this is known colloquially as the "Bell Anthem" because the repeated descending bass scales in the lengthy instrumental prelude are reminiscent of the ringing of changes on the bells of a cathedral.

After the intermission, there were three more vocal numbers, all of them thematically linked to what was to follow.  Then the players (string quartet and harpsichord) launched into the overture of the most famous of all of Purcell's operas, Dido and Aeneas.  This is a beautiful little tragedy-in-miniature lasting a mere 50 minutes, but within that short span of time it encompasses a whole world of emotions.  In keeping with the theatrical conventions of the time, the text has its definite moments of comedy, and the music is often quite jolly, playful, even rowdy.  Thus, when the tragic denouement arrives, the emotions are even more heightened by the lightness of much of what has gone before.  There's a temptation to call it a perfect work of music, but I resist that temptation, largely because a few examples of the word-setting are awkward both to sing and to understand -- a key example being Belinda's "Haste, haste to town".

This, of course, does not matter in the slightest when the dramatic heights of the score arrive!

I was especially pleased by the singing of soprano Teri Dunn, whose coaxing, urging portrayal of Dido's confidante Belinda was a joy to the ear.  The dramatic mezzo-soprano of Lauren Segal in the central role of Dido was powerful in the dramatic moments.  This opera stands or falls by the singing of Dido, and the role has become a famous centrepiece of the mezzo-soprano repertoire.  Segal was appropriately mournful in both of her great arias.  In the first, "Peace and I are strangers grown" was full of foreshadowings of her fate.  Her final aria, "When I am laid in earth", brought tears to my eyes, not least because of the simplicity of her utterance, uncluttered by romanticized overkill.  Dido certainly has to resist the urge to sing the part as if it were early Wagner!

Her Aeneas was baritone Peter McGillivray.  This role presents a different sort of challenge.  Aeneas has to present himself as the worthy partner of both Dido the character and of the singer who portrays her.  Yet he has no big showpiece arias comparable to hers, having to make his mark in relatively brief recitative and arioso passages.  McGillivray's voice was comparably powerful, and he rose to his greatest moment when he agreed to follow the (false) command of Jove to leave Dido and proceed to Italy, though leaving her would break his heart.

It was of a piece with the conventions of the day that some means had to be found to introduce comedy into the show, and this was done by having a Sorceress and two Witches plot to deceive Aeneas into leaving.  In the original story as related in the Aeneid, the commands of the god Mercury are of course the genuine article, but  not here!  Mezzo-soprano Marion Newman made the Sorceress into a most memorable character, with her expressive and mobile face conveying 101 shades of evil amusement.  Vocally, the summoning of her two attendant Witches was a marvellous moment.

Sopranos Virginia Hatfield and Elizabeth Hetherington had great fun with the evil chortling and laughing of the witches.  If their voices became a little shrill at times, there was no harm done as witches probably shouldn't sound too perfect in their singing!  In their second scene, the rendition of the gleeful little duet, "Our plot has took, the Queen's forsook, ha ha ha!" was one of the highlights of the performance.

Tenor Derek Kwan sang robustly as the Sailor in "Come away, fellow sailors", in spite of the fact that he was staggering drunkenly around the hall, singing directly to audience members -- one of the few moments of actual "staging" in the piece.  But it's the most natural thing to do.  When the words say, "Take a boozy short leave of your nymphs on the shore," then it's not hard to see that this ought to be a comical moment.  As always, I regret that no room could be found by the composer to lengthen the song, because it is a delightful melody and the tenor gets only the one short verse to make his mark.  Kwan did so successfully.

The small ensemble of nine singers took turns doing chorus on numbers where they were not singing solo, and blended admirably in the chorus work.  The final sad lament after Dido's death set the seal on a truly gripping performance of this wonderful opera, so compact in its dimensions and so great in its emotional compass.

Director Larry Beckwith and his ensemble of singers and players have given the Festival another remarkable performance that will surely be talked about for years.  And I pity the people who missed it.

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