Dido & Aeneas

Dido and Aeneas is an opera that moves me every time I hear or see it. I loved this film, which incorporates dance as well as music and singing. The costumes and sets are simple but effective to look at, while the photography is superbly rendered throughout. The staging is spare but still effective, the final scene especially really haunted and moved me in the way you'd expect it to. And I have nothing to criticise about the dancing either, it is florid, graceful and passionate, matching Purcell's beautiful but somewhat angular music to perfection. The musical side is just as good, the orchestral playing has all the style and nuances needed for Purcell and Baroque music in general and the conducting is energetic while also allowing the dancing to breathe. The singing of Russell Braun and in particular Jennifer Lane as Aeneas and Dido is just beautiful and deeply felt. But it is Mark Morris' show, his task is a daring one and one he does with great command and skill. His dancing is impeccable, placing a lot of emphasis on gesture and expression. Though as much as he dances Dido wonderfully, in regards to appearance I do think that a lot of people, myself included, would have much preferred a woman in the role. All in all though, a beautiful and really quite excellent dance-opera film. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Mark Morris and his dance troupe were, and are, fond of re-imagining classic works from the repertoire (The Nutcracker became The Hard Nut, for example). This version of Dido, with Morris in the two main female roles of queen Dido and the wicked Sorceress, is full of beauty both in the voices of the soloists and the fluid movement of the dancers.

Shot in film style with a compact palette of colours and a small, core group of dancers, this 'Dido' is full of energy and spirit without sacrificing the tragedy of its central story and characters, infusing the characters with joy, mischief, or sadness as the story demands.

Lingering long in the memory after you've seen it, this ballet repays many later viewings and succeeds on every level, both as dance and as opera. Perhaps Morris's crowning achievement as a dancer and as a choreographer.

Purcell's tragic 17th century story of the Queen of Carthage and her Trojan warrior lover is 'revitalised' by the contemporary choreography of the Mark Morriss Dance Troupe. If this sounds too ghastly for words, fear not. Purcell's opera, a fragile, austere deathbreath in an age of gaudy pomp is given an appropriate interpretation by Morriss. If we think of the late 17th century (eg RESTORATION), we might expect ornate excess, gold, mirrors, armorial bearings, regal folly and the like; Morriss takes the story back to its Greco-Roman origins.

The set is as bare as a Greek stage, a spare arena in which are played out the fundamental dilemmas of love, duty, fate and death. Changes in locale or emotion are registered solely through (very effective) light changes, so that we truly believe the change from Dido's castle to the Sorceress' cave without even minimal prop alterations. The choreography itself, fluid within a rigidly patterned framework, furthers the Greek allusions. The dancers of the roles are split from the singers, who sing outside the ring, creating a disjointed distancing effect, as well as providing the traditional Chorus effect, commenting on the action, even dramatising it in different ways to the dancers - such as the fragmented group that sings at moments of deep crisis.

This fragmentary approach - splitting characters and actions, singing and theatrical performance - extends to the casting. Not only is the female lead played by a man (Morriss himself, alluding to ancient performance practice), but this man plays both female leads, the 'good' queen and the 'evil', disruptive sorceress. This is a highly psychological interpretation of the opera, in which the empty arena works as a kind of mental space for the working out of various 'anxieties' about gender, power, performance, as well as the psychological conflicts within people themselves.

This theoretical opening out of the material never swamps the opera itself - the subdued sets, costumes and dancing allow Purcell's desolate music to haunt; they visualise the ghost the music becomes.