Search - Henry Purcell, Lynne Dawson, Rosemary Joshua :: Dido & Aeneas / Dawson, Joshua, Finlay, Kiehr, Bickley, Visse, Blaze; Jacobs

A superb rendering of the lovely work - best Dido I've heard

Concert Music | Alpharetta, GA USA | 08/24/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"You must purchase this disc, even if you already own this opera (and especially if you own the Pinnock version). Lynne Dawson, who has sung Belinda with Pinnock, here takes on the role of Dido - and gives a perfect, larger-than-life performance. There is nothing I can say that will suffice to express the superlatives her singing deserves. Rene Jacobs does a masterful job of pace - my biggest complaint with Pinnock. Dido's Lament is slow and painful - the world stops spinning for 4 minutes every time I listen in! The Sorceress, sung by Susan Bickley, is outstanding, and the 2 other witches, sung by countertenors and performed as ugly as possible, are very well done indeed. The one performance I liked better on Pinnock's disc was the Aeneas of Stephen Varcoe - but Gerald Finley doesn't turn this into less than a stellar disc. The recording quality lives up to the normal Harmonia Mundi standards. You will not regret this purchase."

Impressive but Not Indispensable

Terry Serres | Minneapolis, MN United States | 09/01/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"There is a lot to recommend this performance, and I certainly prefer it to the fascinating but overrated Emmanuelle Haim account on Virgin. In my affections it cedes first prize to Hogwood on L'oiseau lyre with Bott.



Jacobs lies between Hogwood and Haim both in terms of issue date and instrumental approach -- neither as polite as Hogwood nor as aggressive as Haim. What distinguishes him is some dark sounds from the lower strings, right from the beginning and persisting throughout. He does make strong use of winds and strummed instruments, and the organ at a couple of telling intervals (the Spirit's appearance, as usual, but also Dido's lines just before her final recititive, "But Death, alas! I cannot shun"). Jacobs interpolates music adapted from the Fairy Queen for a chorus and dance to round out the incomplete Act II, but it is not entirely convincing. (Haim ends with Aeneas's soliloquy and Hogwood repeats the ritornelli from the beginning of the scene.)



Lynne Dawson sounds a mite long in the tooth for Dido, but her final confrontation and lament are vibrant with anguish. It is a strong characterization and performance.



Gerald Finley is superb as Aeneas. What a relief to hear a baritone -- and a strong, limber one at that -- in this role, which simply lies too low to bring forth interesting sounds from the tenors to whom it is usually entrusted. He isn't brimming with period inflection but is infinitely more involved than Bostridge for Haim, who busies himself with a thousand whistle-stops on individual words without making a coherent emotional impression.



Susan Bickley as the sorceress is even more attractive in tone than Felicity Palmer for Haim -- her voice is well nigh as beautiful as Dawson's in fact, lending the impression that she is more a romantic rival than a bête noire. She does put some bite into her lines but mostly leaves the vocal dirty work to her witches, portrayed by two countertenors, the characterful Dominique Visse and the eery Stephen Wallace, who actually contrast and harmonize beautifully amidst their antics. Also, Jacobs adapts two choruses of the witches to make one anticipate and one echo the famous echo chorus ... an interesting but superfluous conceit. Elsewhere, Jacobs takes other willful innovations in the dances and choruses that are interesting but don't consistently work. (One place where it does is at Belinda's "Thanks to these lonesome vales," which the chorus repeats after each couple rather than at the end.) The chorus is a heartfelt participant in the drama, and its finale, "With drooping wings" -- delicately textured with one, maybe two, voices per part, at least on the entrances -- is heartbreaking. But then Jacobs overdoes it by repeating the chorus rather than ending on the instrumental repeat that sometimes follows.







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Potentially, very good. Potentially. However ..........

Steven Guy | Croydon, South Australia | 03/24/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Parts of this recording are very good. I like a lot of things about this recording. The cast includes some fine singers. Rosemary Joshua, Gerald Finlay, Maria Christina Kiehr and Robin Blaze, to name a few. The orchestra performs well and the choir is good.



However, some of the singers let this recording down. I am mainly talking about Dominique Visse, who I normally admire very much. Dominique Visse turns parts of this recording into a freak show. Why this was allowed to happen is a mystery to me. The duets with the other countertenor sound ridiculous, it is as if monsieur Visse was throwing a tantrum.



There are a number of better recordings of the great opera on the market - Christie, Pinnock, Hogwood, Gardiner and Mackerras have all made some very good recordings of this work."