UB Opera Workshop to Present Rarely Performed Work, Dido and Aeneas

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo Opera Workshop will present Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, at 8 p.m. March 8 and 2:30 p.m. March 9 in the Drama Theatre in the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

A rarely performed opera, Dido and Aeneas will feature a cast of outstanding student performers and a professional chamber orchestra. This fully staged production is directed by Dora Ohrenstein, visiting professor of music, and conducted by Roland E. Martin, a music lecturer and one of the city's foremost baroque music experts. The multi-disciplinary effort also will feature student artists from UB's media-study and theatre departments.

The opera, composed in 1689, runs slightly more than one hour in length and was the first opera in English. Based on a section of Virgil's Aeneid, it is a tale of disappointed love between Dido, Queen of Carthage, and Aeneas, hero of the Trojan wars. Dido is one of opera's most complex and touching figures, a classic "woman who loves too much," and her aria at the end of the opera, "When I am Laid in Earth," is known as a masterpiece. Other characters of particular interest in the opera are the Sorceress and her two witch cohorts, whose malicious interventions destroy Dido's love and, eventually, her life. The chorus has a very prominent role in this opera, commenting on the characters and the story as it unfolds.

The UB Opera Workshop's production will update the story to contemporary times: Dido is a movie queen and the chorus is a group of paparazzi who relentlessly invade her privacy.

Director Ohrenstein has chosen this approach to underline one of the work's major themes: the conflict between public and private duty, a theme that is present in the work's original setting in the ancient Greek world and is brought to life in this production through an equivalent modern-day situation. The concept will be supported with a live video camera on stage, shooting selected scenes which will be projected from video monitors placed all around the theater. The audience will experience the stage production and its video counterpart simultaneously. In addition, the opera's three witches will be portrayed as figures from Dido's disturbed unconscious mind, representing the self-destructive forces within her, an interpretation that allows for a multi-faceted portrayal of the central character.

Professor Ohrenstein has had a long association with contemporary music theater. She has performed in the landmark Philip Glass/Robert Wilson production of Einstein on the Beach, The Photographer and other new works. Later in the season she will make her professional directorial debut in a Buffalo production of the opera Pagliacci with the Buffalo Opera Theatre.

Tickets for Dido and Aeneas are $5, and are available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday at the Slee Hall Box Office, and from noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday-Friday at the Center for the Arts Box Office and all Ticketmaster locations, including Kaufmann's and Movies Plus. To charge tickets, call 852-5000. Tickets also may be obtained online at http://www.ticketmaster.com. Convenience charges apply for all telephone, outlet and online purchases, but not for Slee Hall or Center for the Arts Box Office purchases.