‘Life’s a bitch and then you die’: this Dido and Aeneas is a bridge too far

Director Yaron Lifschitz, also the artistic director of Circa, has made a glamorous, abstract, film noir-drenched piece of theatre that’s also extremely chilly and distancing.

Anna Dowsley stars in Opera Queensland’s and Circa’s Dido and Aeneas

Dido and Aeneas

Opera Queensland and Circa, QPAC, Brisbane, July 11.

Perhaps you can’t catch lightning in a bottle twice in a row.

Five years ago Opera Queensland and the internationally renowned Brisbane company Circa got together on a production of Orpheus and Eurydice and it was dynamite.

Still is actually, because Opera Australia presented it this year and West Australian Opera does it in October.

Orpheus was truly beautiful. It joined opera and contemporary circus in a tight, meaningful, unforgettable embrace.

You can understand why the two companies are having another go, this time with Dido and Aeneas, Henry Purcell’s ravishing little late-17th century jewel. Opera and contemporary circus make fabulous bedfellows when everything meshes. Performers in both disciplines dare to walk the highwire, sometimes metaphorically and sometimes for real. Will they make it or won’t they? Danger is ever present.

But this time, even with the Circa ensemble flooding the stage with astonishing acts of physical daring and even with star mezzo Anna Dowsley looking a gazillion dollars and singing like a woman possessed, Dido and Aeneas strays a long way from home base without a persuasive enough payoff.

Director Yaron Lifschitz, also the artistic director of Circa, has made an extremely glamorous, abstract, film noir-drenched piece of theatre that’s also extremely chilly and distancing.

The opera comes with a fragmented, dreamy plot thanks to librettist Nahum Tate (oddly uncredited in the Opera Queensland program). Dido, queen of Carthage, falls in love with the Trojan prince Aeneas who has been shipwrecked on her coast. The gods put their oars in and the two are parted. There is light before the dark but it’s brief, as is the opera. Here it’s over in 70 minutes even with some additional music.

Lifschitz takes this delicate narrative and turns it into a dark and heavy night of the soul for Dido.

Opera Queensland and Circa perform Dido and Aeneas.

To that end he has Dowsley appear not only as Dido but also as the creepy Sorceress who orchestrates Dido’s demise. Further loading the dice, Lifschitz makes tenor Sebastian Maclaine’s Aeneas a forgettable lightweight. The few secondary characters are totally anonymous, all dressed alike.

It doesn’t make much sense until you read in the director’s program note that Dido is a tortured creature responsible for her own downfall. It’s not a reading that appeals.

From moment to moment there are striking images to take away, even when they don’t illuminate the drama, and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s plush sound (Benjamin Bayl conducting) and that of the OQ Chorus brings welcome colour to a forbidding world of black and white with occasional touches of red.

When opera and circus are in perfect harmony, as in a stunning interlude with performers on poles in the distance, you can see how potentially powerful the idea is.

An overly cerebral approach, however, dampens the ardour.

On entering the theatre the audience sees a kind of ticker-tape stream of quotations, aphorisms, affirmations, song lyrics and so on interspersed with words from Dido’s Lament. They will reappear near the end.

The words are mostly about love and desire but there’s nothing particularly revelatory about them and they set the tone. It’s fun playing spot the reference — Shakespeare, Jim Steinman, that icky line from the film Notting Hill — but as impetus for the opera the idea feels forced.

Dido’s famous, peerless farewell is delivered by Dowsley with intense, gleaming power and it’s not her fault it can’t reach the heart. There’s a hard edge to this production from start to finish. Life’s a bitch and then you die.

Tickets: $65-$129. Bookings: online. Duration: 70 minutes, no interval. Ends July 27.