Scots Opera Project: Dido and Aeneas

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Amphitheatre, 1/9/24

 Henry Purcell – Dido and Aeneas, Scots Opera Project and Pitlochry Festival Theatre, David Douglas, director, Emma Morwood, soprano.

I have a long and happy relationship with the music of Henry Purcell (1659-1695). Since singing in the chorus of ‘King Arthur’ as a boy treble at school, his music has been part of my life. In the early 1990s, I sang the Cold Genius in ‘King Arthur’ with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert, at that time the foremost early music ensemble in the world. We recorded Purcell’s incidental music for John Dryden’s play, ‘King Arthur, or the British Worthy,’ for Deutsche Grammophon and embarked on a major tour which saw us perform in the Opéra Garnier, Paris, the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires, the Konzerthaus, Berlin, and the Royal Albert Hall, London, in the BBC Proms. The famous Frost Scene, in which I sang with the great Canadian soprano, Nancy Argenta, became the go-to recording for the next few decades on BBC Radio 3. A couple of years later, with the same ensemble, I recorded the incidental music to ‘Dioclesian’ and ‘Timon of Athens’ also with DG.

 All this preamble explains why, when I saw that Purcell’s only opera, ‘Dido and Aeneas,’ was being performed in Pitlochry, in a co-production between the Pitlochry Festival Theatre and the Scots Opera Project, I jumped at the chance to review it. When I discovered that it was being sung alfresco in the Amphitheatre above the Festival Theatre in Scots and Gaelic, and that it starred the Edinburgh-based Northern Irish soprano, Emma Morwood, who had heroically jumped in at the last minute to save the Edinburgh Festival’s closing performance of Strauss’s ‘Capriccio’, I simply couldn’t resist. Now the idea of an open-air production of anything in the Highlands of Scotland in early September might be regarded as foolish beyond belief, and it is certainly an ambitious project, but the day dawned bright and, most importantly, dry when I set off north for Pitlochry. Having worked there in a cocktail bar nearly 50 years ago as a summer vacation job from university, I’ve always had a soft spot for Pitlochry, especially as several members of the Festival company used to come into our bar, from the old theatre in the centre of the town.

The Festival Theatre, in its modern site overlooking the River Tummel, is a hugely successful phenomenon, with a repertory company and a string of well-received productions every year. The Amphitheatre, built within the Explorers’ Garden above the theatre, is in a beautiful setting deep in the forest, a construction of Scottish wood which allows an acoustic resonance which is often hard to find in outdoor theatres. A simple set built around a rotating throne with mossy rocks which turn into a witch’s cauldron, and a central space for the instrumental ensemble of violin, cello and keyboard, faces the amphitheatre of wooden benches for the audience. Thankfully for people with reduced mobility, there are some individual seats at the back, and space for wheelchairs, and the whole little theatre is accessible either by a zigzag path with a not too steep gradient or via the road which comes off the A9. It’s not ideal for the disabled, but possible.

A decent audience found its way to the amphitheatre by 1pm on Sunday, although it would have been hugely helpful for the theatre itself to be open. Traditional Sunday closing seems somewhat anomalous these days, and two slightly grubby ‘portaloos’ are hardly sufficient for a largely elderly audience. It’s early days for these outdoor gigs, but I do think it would be wise to open the theatre. I’m sure a lot of the audience would have used the cafe and other facilities.

 The production by David Douglas, who also sang the tenor roles of the sailor, the spirit and the third witch, was simple and very effective, using the small space very well, and moving the Community Chorus around imaginatively. There was a lot of chorus mugging going on at the beginning, but fortunately that settled down. Less is more in chorus scenes! The local amateurs sang very well though and contributed to the success of the project. That project, singing the text in a mixture of Scots and Gaelic, worked remarkably well, although I wasn’t quite sure what the rationale of the switch from one language to the other was. In the small playing area, the words were reasonably clear, and some of the well-known phrases from the original libretto by Nahum Tate were strikingly translated by Michael Dempster into Scots and by Marcas Mac an Tuairneir into Scots Gaelic. I enjoyed the sailor’s song in Scene 4, when he enjoins his friends to “tak a bowzy short lea o your quines on the shore” and the Sorceress and her witches sound even more sinister when they predict that “Carthage burns the morra!” Dido’s great lament at the end starts in Gaelic and gains by it. I also liked the costumes and the idea of transferring the action from North Africa to the ancient Celtic world, where Dido is a warrior queen, Aeneas a handsome foreign prince and the Sorceress a Scottish witch or Cailleach. Macbeth’s witches were easily brought to mind, and the working of twigs and branches into their costumes well-done.

 Musically, we were again well served by simplicity. Claire Telford (violin), Peter Harvey (cello) and music director Andrew Johnston (keyboard) played with admirable stylishness, and the professional voices mixed well with the excellent amateur ones. As the Sorceress, Ulrika Wutcher, an Austrian mezzo living in Stirling and working as a music teacher, displayed a pleasing voice and a talent for evil glowering, while David Douglas, who also directed the show, made a good impression in his three small roles. Colleen Nicol, as Dido’s handmaiden Belinda, revealed a winsome soprano voice, and also directed the Community Chorus.

Colin Murray, as Aeneas, showed off his mellifluous high baritone to excellent effect, and was a dashing Aeneas. Towering over the cast, and given much the largest role by Purcell, was the splendid Emma Morwood as Dido, pouring out a glorious sound and acting the doomed queen to a T. The role can be sung by mezzo or soprano, although it’s usually a mezzo. It was quite interesting to hear a soprano, changing the aural quality without disturbing the result. The opera has become famous largely due to the great lament towards the end, “When I am laid in earth,” and Ms Morwood did not disappoint us with her rendition in the two Scottish languages. Her leap from the closing concert of the EIF in the Usher Hall, with the likes of Malin Byström and Dame Sarah Connolly, to a little amphitheatre in a forest in the Highlands is typical of the varied life of a professional singer but reminds us that qualities of excellence and concentration are a constant.

There are six more performances on 7th September (1pm and 5pm), 8th September (1pm), 14th September (1pm and 5pm) and 15th September (1pm), and I would encourage our readers to try to see this production, weather-permitting. Pitlochry is lovely in September! The Scots Opera Project is a thoroughly worthwhile venture and deserves all our support.