Favorites of 2024: Live performances

We saw a lot of great live performances this year, so it was difficult to narrow my choice of favorites to just eight. In chronological order of performance:

Premier Ensemble of the San Francisco Girls Chorus with musical director Valerie Sainte-Agathe. Image source: San Francisco Girls Chorus

Antonio Vivaldi, Juditha Triumphans (Judith triumphant, 1716), libretto by Iacopo Cassetti.

Performers: Premier Ensemble of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, musical direction by Valerie Sainte-Agathe, stage direction by Céline Ricci, score arranged by Adam Cockerham.

Co-presenters and venue: San Francisco Girls Chorus and Ars Minerva; Z Space at Project Artaud, San Francisco; seen 9 March.

Antonio Vivaldi wrote many of his works for the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. The Pietà was one of four orphanages that took in abandoned girls and provided musical training to those who showed talent; at various times Vivaldi was a teacher, music director and composer there.

So it's entirely fitting that the sacred oratorio Juditha Triumphans, written for the highly skilled women of the Pietà, was performed by the Premier Ensemble of the San Francisco Girls Chorus. The oratorio tells the Apocryphal story of the beautiful Bethulian widow Judith, who, when her city is beseiged by an Assyrian army commanded by Holofernes, goes to his camp and pretends to betray her people. But when she and her maid are left alone with Holofernes in his tent, she plies him with wine until he falls asleep, beheads him with his own sword, and escapes back to her city.

Judith beheading Holofernes, by Artemisia Gentileschi, ca. 1612. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The score of the oratorio was arranged for a small instrumental ensemble and the arias were judiciously trimmed by theorbist Adam Cockerham. Stage director Céline Ricci assigned the role of Judith in turn to different members of the Premier Ensemble, suggesting that all women possess Judith's courage and strength. The singers were dressed in contemporary clothes, with each Judith being strapped by her compatriots into a breastplate symbolic of her warrior status. The transformation from one Judith to the next was often effected through a magic box onstage; one Judith would enter the box and after a few moments the next would emerge. Sharing the part of Judith was a meaningful way to distribute the taxing role among multiple young singers, who each fully embodied the heroine dramatically and vocally.

From Juditha Triumphans, the song of the Assyrians welcoming Juditha to their camp, "O quam Vaga," sung by members of the Premier Ensemble accompanied by Corey Jamason on harpsichord:

https://youtu.be/d1WP3N-dEzI?t=3218

After their excellent performance of Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with Voices of Music at the 2018 Berkeley Festival and Exhibition, the San Francisco Girls Chorus did full justice to another great Baroque work written for young women with Juditha Triumphans. More, please! Next, might I suggest John Blow's Venus and Adonis (the other opera that we know was performed in the 1680s at Josias Priest's boarding school in Chelsea for "young gentlewomen"), or more music composed for the Ospedali? For more information on their upcoming projects please visit the SFGC website.

Clockwise from top left: Gregório Taniguchi, Mischa Bouvier, Julie Bosworth, Jesse Blumberg, Steven Brennfleck, and Agnes Vojtkó. Image source: American Bach Soloists

Johann Sebastian Bach, St. John Passion (1724), librettist unknown (possibly Bach himself).

Performers: Gregório Taniguchi (Evangelist), Mischa Bouvier (Jesus), Jesse Blumberg (Pilate), Daniel Yoder (Peter), Julie Bosworth (soprano), Agnes Vojtkó (mezzo-soprano), and other soloists, with American Bach Soloists conducted by Jeffrey Thomas.

Presenter and venue: American Bach Soloists; St. Mark's Lutheran Church, San Francisco; seen 10 March.

Bach's Johannes-Passion was written for his first Good Friday in Leipzig in 1724. Just a few weeks shy of its 300th anniversary, Jeffrey Thomas conducted a taut, compelling performance of the drama of Christ's condemnation and crucifixion. His soloists were uniformly excellent, but I must make a special mention of mezzo-soprano Agnes Vojtkó's moving rendition of "Es ist vollbracht!" The indefatigable tenor Gregório Taniguchi as the Evangelist and the bright-voiced soprano Julie Bosworth were both late substitutes in their roles and performed admirably. For information about the remaining concerts in ABS's 2024–25 season, please visit the ABS website.

Jory Vinikour and Rachel Barton Pine. Image source: Early Music in Columbus

Johann Sebastian Bach: Sonatas and Partitas (1717–23)

Performers: Rachel Barton Pine, Baroque violin, with Jory Vinikour, harpsichord.

Presenter and venue: San Francisco Early Music Society; St. Mark's Lutheran Church, San Francisco; seen 7 April.

This concert featured two of Bach's Sonatas for violin and harpsichord (No. 1 in B minor and No. 3 in E major), along with the great Partita for solo violin in D minor. All were written by Bach during his years in Cöthen, before he took the position of Thomaskantor in Leipzig. Rachel Barton Pine gave bold, extroverted interpretations of these works, particularly the monumental, 13-minute-long Chaconne of the Partita. It's the supreme test of any violinist, and she met its challenges with flawless technique. Although this was not as searching or inward an interpretation as some I've heard, Barton Pine's bravura performance was an equally valid reading and a stunning achievement. The 2024–25 San Francisco Early Music Society season continues; details can be found on the SFEMS website, where pay-what-you-can tickets are available.

Amanda Forsythe. Image source: Helen Sykes Artist Management

Awake, Sweet Love: English music for voice and viols (late 16th–early 17th century)

Performers: Amanda Forsythe, soprano, with Voice of the Viol, Elizabeth Reed, director.

Presenter and venue: San Francisco Early Music Society Berkeley Festival and Exhibition; Berkeley City Club; seen 11 June.

Amanda Forsythe is a pure-toned soprano who can manage astonishing flights of coloratura with apparent ease. This program called on a different talent: conveying deep emotion through deceptively simple means. Accompanied by the consort Voice of the Viol led by Elizabeth Reed, Forsythe performed love songs by English composers such as John Dowland, William Byrd, and John Wilbye, who bridged the time of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. The Julia Morgan-designed Berkeley City Club ballroom, with its wood panelling and bright acoustic, was the perfect venue for this concert. If ultimately I think I prefer Forsythe in 17th- and 18th-century opera, it was still wonderful to hear her in this intimate repertory. This is the second of three entries in this list presented by the San Francisco Early Music Society, which seems to be going from strength to strength under the leadership of director Derek Tam (himself a well-regarded early music performer).

The Fortune Teller, Jean Frederic Bazille, 1869; The Death of Dido, Joseph Stallaert, c. 1872. Image source: The Handel Opera Project

Antonio Caldara: The Card Game (Il giuoco del Quadriglio, 1734), librettist unknown (possibly Pietro Metastasio).

Performers: Eliza O'Malley (Livia), Courtnee Rhone (Clarice), Daphne Touchais (Camilla), Katherine Gray (Ottavia); stage director Olivia Freidenreich.

Henry Purcell: Dido and Aeneas (1688?), libretto by Nahum Tate.

Performers: Sara Couden (Dido), Wayne D. Wong (Aeneas), Daphne Touchais (Belinda), Katherine Gray (2nd Lady), Don Hoffman (Sorcerer), Eliza O'Malley, Ellen St. Thomas and Reuben Zellman (Witches); stage director Ellen St. Thomas.

Presenter and venue: The Handel Opera Project; First Church of Christ Scientist, Berkeley; seen 15 June.

I'm of the school that Henry Purcell's 50-minute-long Dido and Aeneas is a full program all by itself, on stage or record, and needs no pairing (with the possible exception of John Blow's Venus and Adonis, the opera that Dido and Aeneas was clearly modelled on). So I approached this double bill with a bit of trepidation. That trepidation was only heightened when I noticed a banjo and electric bass player (Ryan Danley) listed among the instrumentalists, and that the Sorceress in Dido had become a Sorcerer (in the oldest surviving score the role is in the alto range).

And, in fact, apart from the vocal and instrumental forces required, there isn't really any connecting thread that I could discern between Caldara's witty comedy and Purcell's profound tragedy. The Card Game portrays a hand of quadrille played by four argumentative friends (the program helpfully included a reproduction of an 18th-century guide to the game). As one character sings, "card playing reveals your real character, whether you're winning or losing," and each player sings an aria illustrative of her personality—blithe, impatient, competitive, moralizing—until they all become frustrated and quit the game with a final chorus and invitation to dance.

It's a soufflé-light entertainment originally written for the Habsburg Archduchess Maria Theresa to perform in on her 17th birthday (she sang Clarice, while her sister Maria Anna sang Livia), and it was given a charming staging by Olivia Freidenreich. Perhaps a more closely related companion piece would have been Caldara's Le cinesi (The Chinese women, 1735), written for Maria Theresa to perform in on her 18th birthday, or Gluck's version of two decades later, which was Vittoria Tesi's final opera performance.

But we were there for Dido, and weren't disappointed. Sara Couden gave a magnificent performance in the title role, her deep, powerful alto conveying all the sorrow of the wronged queen. Daphne Touchais was an excellent Belinda, at first urging her queen to love the hero Aeneas (Wayne D. Wong) and too late realizing that her counsel has brought disaster.

There were subtle touches throughout Ellen St. Thomas's staging, which made good use of the unusual space in the beautiful Bernard Maybeck-designed church. And Danley's electric bass provided some eerie rumbling sound effects at the change of scene from Dido's court to the cave of the sinister Sorcerer (Don Hoffman) and his trio of witches (Eliza O'Malley, Ellen St. Thomas and Reuben Zellman). It was a production that made the most of its strengths, particularly Couden's memorable assumption of the title role. For current and future projects see The Handel Opera Project's website.

The servant Leporello (Donghoon Kang) clings to his master Don Giovanni (Hyungjin Son) in the Merola Opera Program's production of Don Giovanni. Photo credit: Kristen Loken; image source: SF Classical Voice

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Don Giovanni (1787)

Performers: Hyungjin Son (Don Giovanni), Donghoon Kang (Leporello), Lydia Grindatto (Donna Anna), Viviana Aurelia Goodwin (Donna Elvira), Moriah Berry (Zerlina), Justice Yates (Masetto), Benjamin R. Sokol (Commendatore), and Michael John Butler (Don Ottavio), with the San Francisco Opera Center Orchestra conducted by Stefano Sarzani; stage direction by Patricia Racette.

Presenter and venue: Merola Opera Program; Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, San Francisco Conservatory of Music; seen 3 August.

As I wrote in my full review, "the inspiration for director Patricia Racette's production of Don Giovanni was the neorealist film movement in postwar Italy." But "her focus was less on the concept and more on helping the performers create fully fleshed-out characterizations. Interactions among the characters were also carefully thought through. As a result, this seemed more like a true ensemble work than merely a showcase for Hyungjin Son's excellently-sung Don Giovanni. . .Many a major opera company would love to be able to produce a Don Giovanni so well-performed and -directed." For future productions and showcases, see the Merola Opera Program website.

Ambroisine Bré. Image source: Olyrix.com

The Sound of Music in Versailles (late 17th–early 18th century)

Performers: Ambroisine Bré (mezzo-soprano), with Les Talens Lyriques directed by Christophe Rousset.

Presenter and venue: San Francisco Early Music Society; First Church UCC, Berkeley; seen 12 November.

What a privilege to see the renowned Christophe Rousset and musicians from his ensemble Les Talens Lyriques. They appeared twice on my Favorites of 2021: Recordings list, and could have appeared again this year with Lully's Acis et Galatée (Aparté AP269), in which Ambroisine Bré sang Galatea. She also sang Climene in Francesco Cavalli's L'Egisto (Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS 076), another candidate for my favorites list that was cut (for reasons of space, not quality).

The program was French music primarily from the time of Louis XIV by Lambert and Lully, with two rarely performed cantates by Montéclair that were first published in 1728, during the reign of Louis XV, but may have been written earlier. Lambert's music was simpler and each song tended to focus on a single feeling or state of mind, while the Lully and Montéclair selections were more like miniature operas, calling on Bré to express a wide range of emotions. Her voice is lovely, with an appealing richness in its lower range. As Christophe Rousset says in the preview video below, this is music of intimacy and refinement, and Bré and Les Talens Lyriques were its ideal exponents.

https://youtu.be/op0TH9lSd9c

For more information about the remaining concerts in the 2024–25 season, please see the SFEMS website.

Alexa Anderson as the title character in La Flora. Image source: Ars Minerva

Antonio Sartorio and Marc'Antonio Ziani: La Flora (1681), libretto by Novello Bonis.

Performers: Alexa Anderson (Flora), Jasmine Johnson (Pompeo), Wayne Wong (Silla), Aura Veruni (Emilia), Sara Couden (Servio), Nina Jones (Geminio), and others; stage director Céline Ricci.

Presenter and venue: Ars Minerva; ODC Theater, San Francisco; seen 17 November.

All opera involves suspension of disbelief, but the lieto fine or "happy ending" of Baroque opera is a convention that can stretch credulity past the breaking point. After three hours of misunderstandings, reversals, threats, betrayals, and anguish, in the final scene all conflicts are abruptly resolved and the proper couples are united at last.

But in the end is everything always made right, and are the right couples always united? Sometimes (as in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea, 1642), or Handel's Agrippina, 1709) that question is raised explicitly, but even when it seems we're supposed to take the happy ending at face value we can feel a distinct unease.

In La Flora, director Céline Ricci brilliantly heightened that unease. The Roman ruler Silla (Wayne Wong) orders his son-in-law Servio (Sara Couden) to divorce Silla's daughter Emilia (Aura Veruni) so that she can be married instead to Pompeo (Jasmine Johnson). The new marriage is planned for Sulla's political advantage; the feelings of Emilia and Servio, who love each other, as well as those of Pompeo and Flora (Alexa Anderson), who are also a couple, are not consulted.

Servio obeys Silla's orders to divorce the stunned Emilia, but then dies when he attempts to lead a rebellion and kill Pompeo. Emilia is left bereft and in a state of shock, which was depicted with chilling verisimilitude by Ricci and Veruni. Her status as a sexual pawn in her father's political game is made wrenchingly clear to her, and to us. No happy ending is ever going to be possible for her, and indeed in the final scene Ricci imagines the opera's characters taking matters into their own hands to elude the dictator's calculated arrangements.

Once again, as she writes in her director's note, Ricci's staging of a centuries-old opera was "more than an exercise in musical archaeology." In La Flora, "the human cost of political machinations is illuminated—a reality as relevant today as it was in ancient Rome or 17th century Venice." On a budget several orders of magnitude smaller than that of our civic opera company, she brought together all the elements necessary for another incisive Ars Minerva production: a restored performing score by theorbist Adam Cockerham, an excellent period-instrument ensemble led by Matthew Dirst, a vocally and dramatically compelling cast, Entropy's scene-setting projections, Marina Polakoff's costumes (especially a series of glittering gowns for Flora), Joe McClinton's colloquial supertitles, and her own keenly intelligent direction.

As ever, Ricci's work brought us much pleasure this year. It's fitting that my list of favorite performances of 2024 begins and ends with her. For more on her past and future projects, please see the Ars Minerva website.

My Favorites of 2024:

• Movies and television
• Recorded music
• Live performances
• Books

Favorites of 2010-2019: Live performances

When listing my favorite live performances of 2010-2019 I wanted to focus on the performing arts organizations that have immeasurably enriched our lives over the past decade. So in alphabetical order, the organizations to which we are grateful together with a favorite live performance sponsored by each:

Rebecca Myers Hoke (Sémélé) and Sara LeMesh (Junon) in Sémélé. Photo: Gas Lamp Productions

American Bach Soloists: Under the leadership of founder Jeffrey Thomas, each year ABS produces a full season plus a summer festival showcasing young artists from the ABS Academy.

• Favorite performance: Marin Marais: Sémélé
  Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, August 14, 2015.
  
  After its initial 1709 run Marais' Sémélé remained unperformed for nearly 300 years. To have the opportunity to hear this magnificent and unjustly neglected score was truly a privilege, and Thomas and his musicians and singers performed it beautifully.

Kindra Scharich as Rosaura in Ermelinda. Photo: Teresa Tam/Ars Minerva

Ars Minerva: Astonishingly creative productions of forgotten Baroque operas rediscovered, edited, and restaged by indefatigable Artistic Director Céline Ricci.

• Favorite performance: Ermelinda
  Nikola Printz (Ermelinda), Sara Couden (Ormondo/Clorindo), Kindra Scharich (Rosaura), Justin Montigne (Aristeo), Deborah Rosengaus (Armidoro). Period-instrument orchestra conducted by Jory Vinikour; stage direction by Céline Ricci. ODC Theater, San Francisco, seen November 24, 2019.
  
  The success of Ars Minerva's Ermelinda was due not only to Ricci's painstaking archival research, but to her unerring eye and ear, her highly imaginative staging, and her ability to pull together singers, musicians and a creative team who were wholly committed to her vision. Ermelinda was a triumph.

David Hansen (Nerone) and Amanda Forsythe (Poppea) in L'Incoronazione di Poppea. Photo: BEMF.

Boston Early Music Festival: This venerable biennial festival (founded in 1980) brings the best early music performers to the Boston area for concerts and exhibitions, and to international audiences through their excellent recording series.

• Favorite performance:  The Monteverdi Trilogy
  Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs, musical directors; Gilbert Blin, stage director and set designer; seen June 12-14, 2015.
  
  In 2015 the Boston Early Music Festival staged of all of Monteverdi's extant operas: L'Orfeo, (Orpheus, 1607), Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria (The return of Ulysses to his homeland, 1640), and L'incoronazione di Poppea (The coronation of Poppea, 1642). The musical and vocal performances were exceptional, and the stagings ranged from good (Orfeo, Ulisse) to excellent (Poppea); for details please click the links to my original posts. It was a privilege to be able to see these three masterpieces performed on successive days. 

Lesley Garrison and Durell R. Comedy in Layla and Majnun. Photo: Susana Millman.

 

Cal Performances is the UC Berkeley-based sponsor of concerts in the past decade by Joyce Di Donato, Philippe Jaroussky, Mark Morris Dance Group, Dorothea Röschmann, Jordi Savall & Hesperion XXI, Takács Quartet, Tallis Scholars, and many others.

• Favorite performance: Layla and Majnun
  Mark Morris Dance Company, with Alim Qasimov (Majnun), Fargana Qasimova (Layla), and the Silk Road Ensemble, commissioned by Cal Performances. Seen in its world premiere performance at Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, Friday, September 30, 2016.
  
  This was a very tough call because Cal Performances sponsors so many wonderful concerts each year. Layla and Majnun, like Juliet and Romeo, are lovers tragically separated by their families and united only in death. Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyli's 1908 opera was adapted and condensed into an hour-long work for two singers accompanied by a chamber orchestra mixing Western, Azerbaijani and Asian instruments; Mark Morris choreographed the accompanying dances. But it was the music—particularly the melismatic microtonal mugham singing of Alim Qasimov and Faragana Qasimova—that was especially stunning.

Shreya Ghoshal

Friends of the San Francisco Public Library sponsors programs at every branch throughout the year and is a leading advocate for sustainable funding for the library.

• Favorite program: Shreya Ghoshal
  Bollywood Song and Dance with Dhaval and Gunjan and friends, Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Public Library main branch, March 3, 2018.
  
  In a basement auditorium at my local public library one spring afternoon I happened across a performance by the playback singer Shreya Ghoshal. If you aren't a Bollywood fan, perhaps you don't realize how improbable that is. Shreya Ghoshal has performed on the soundtracks of something like 500 films, including E & I favorites Vivah (2006), Godavari (2006), Dor (2006), Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006, one of my Favorite Bollywood Films from the 2000s), Aaja Nachle (2007), 3 Idiots (2009), Band Baaja Baaraat (2010), Love U...Mr. Kalakaar! (2011), PK (2014), and four of my Top Ten Shah Rukh Khan movies: Devdas (2002, for which she won the RD Burman Award for New Music Talent and the Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer), Paheli (2005), Om Shanti Om (2007), and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2009). What a privilege to be able to see her in such an intimate setting.

Cesare (Sarah Connolly), Cleopatra (Joélle Harvey), and members of the Glyndebourne Chorus in Giulio Cesare. Photo: Glyndebourne.com

Glyndebourne Festival Opera: The original country house opera festival, Glyndebourne (begun in 1934) continues to present great singers in striking productions.

• Favorite performance: Giulio Cesare
  Sarah Connolly (Giulio Cesare), Joélle Harvey (Cleopatra), Christophe Dumaux (Tolomeo), Patricia Bardon (Cornelia), and Anna Stéphany (Sesto), John Moore (Achilla), the Glyndebourne Chorus and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by William Christie, seen June 20, 2018.
  
  Director David McVicar's production of Cesare comments on the lengthy history of British imperialism in the Middle East and India. It's also very funny and moving, and with a cast of committed performers and Handel's great music the evening was, in a word, sublime.

Sylvestris Quartet performing at SF Music Day 2017. Image: Sylvestris Quartet

InterMusic SF: Sponsor of the annual free musical cornucopia SF Music Day, as well as grants and programs throughout the year.

• Favorite performance: Sylvestris Quartet
  SF Music Day, Education Studio, War Memorial Veterans Building, San Francisco, September 24, 2017.
  
  SF Music Day is an astonishing event. Each year over the course of a single day in four different venues around the vast Veterans Building, InterMusic SF presents more than 30 groups playing jazz, international, classical and/or contemporary music. On SF Music Day 2017 I was most impressed by the program of the period-instrument Sylvestris Quartet performing "250 years of French string music in 30 minutes." The pieces ranged from Marc-Antoine Charpentier's 17th-century Concert pour 4 parties de violes to a meltingly beautiful rendition of the slow movement from Camille Saint-Saëns' String Quartet No. 1 from 1899.

Kindra Scharich with the Alexander String Quartet.

Lieder Alive! supports the teaching, performance and appreciation of art songs.

• Favorite performance: The Mahler Song Cycles
  Kindra Scharich with the Alexander String Quartet, Noe Valley Ministry, San Francisco, September 10, 2017.
  
  To open Lieder Alive's 2017/18 Liederabend Series rich-voiced mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich, accompanied by the Alexander String Quartet, presented a program of three song cycles by Gustav Mahler arranged by Zakarias Grafilo, first violin of the ASQ. The quartet versions offered both intimacy and fullness, and Scharich's voice floated beautifully over the strings. Their recording of these works was one of my Favorites of 2010-2019: Music.

Andreas Scholl, Anne Sofie von Otter and conductor Nicholas McGegan (rear center). Image: Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra: North America's premier period-instrument orchestra, directed for the past 35 years by Nicholas McGegan.

• Favorite performance: Anne Sofie von Otter and Andreas Scholl
  Weill Hall/Green Music Center, Sonoma State University, May 14, 2016.
  
  We drove 60 miles north to the Green Music Center on the campus of Sonoma State University to see two of the greatest singers of our era perform arias by Handel. But it was the second half of the program, featuring hauntingly performed contemplative songs by Arvo Pärt and Caroline Shaw, that made this one of the most memorable concerts of the past decade.

Dajeong Song (Unulfo) and Molly Boggess (Bertarido) in Rodelinda at SFCM.

San Francisco Conservatory of Music: This renowned conservatory, founded in 1917, presents an almost daily series of concerts from the next generation of musicians and singers; most are free.

• Favorite performance: Rodelinda, Regina de' Longobardi
  Karen Notovitz (Rodelinda), Matheus Coura (Bertarido), James Hogan (Grimoaldo), with the SFCM Baroque Ensemble conducted by Corey Jamason. Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, SF Conservatory of Music, seen March 11, 2018.
  
  With both Historical Performance and Opera & Musical Theatre programs, SFCM presents (at low or no cost to the audience) fully staged operas rarely produced elsewhere. Rodelinda is the widowed queen of Lombardy, who is sexually blackmailed by Grimoaldo, her husband Bertarido's usurper and murderer. But is her husband really dead. . .? Karen Notovitz gave a lovely, moving performance as Rodelinda, with excellent support by Matheus Coura, James Hogan and the other members of the cast.

San Francisco Early Music Society: Sponsors of the biennial Berkeley Festival and Exhibition of early music, plus an annual series of concerts and workshops.

• Favorite performance: England's Orpheus: Iestyn Davies & Thomas Dunford
  Iestyn Davies' sweet-toned countertenor was ideal for this program of songs by John Dowland, Henry Purcell, and George Frideric Handel, accompanied by Thomas Dunford's lute. Davies' performance as David on DVD in Handel's Saul from Glyndebourne was one of my Favorites of 2018: Recordings.

San Francisco Opera: Founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola, SF Opera approaches its 100th birthday with the difficult dual mission of remaining both artistically vital and financially viable.

• Favorite performance: Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Tales of Hoffmann)
  Matthew Polenzani (Hoffmann), Christian Van Horn (Councillor Lindorf, Coppélius, Dr. Miracle, Dapertutto), Hye Jung Lee (Olympia), Natalie Dessay (Antonia), Irene Roberts (Giulietta), SF Opera Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Patrick Fournillier, stage direction and costume designs by Laurent Pelly, SF War Memorial Opera House, seen June 5, 2013.
  
  Exactly what we'd love to see more of at the San Francisco Opera: a striking production of an uncommon opera with a superb cast. Laurent Pelly's visually arresting staging of Jacques Offenbach's late masterwork employed a virtually flawless cast featuring tenor Matthew Polenzani as an ardent Hoffmann, thrillingly sinister bass-baritone Christian Van Horn as the four villains, the lovely (and lovely-voiced) mezzo Angela Brower as the Muse/Nicklausse, the (almost literally) stratospheric Hye Jung Lee as the doll Olympia, and Natalie Dessay as the tragic Antonia. It's difficult to imagine a more compelling production of this dark, eerie, and beautiful work.
  
  It's easy to complain about the company's sometimes unadventurous repertory choices—and I haven't resisted the temptation. But amid the diminishing-return revivals of Tosca and Madama Butterfly in the past decade the company has mounted strongly cast and often brilliantly conceived productions of Handel's Partenope (2014 & 2019), Berlioz's Les Troyens (2015), Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro (2010, 2015 & 2019), Richard Strauss's Arabella (2018), and Dvořák's Rusalka (2019). We're looking forward to the new season announcement next month.

Image: San Francisco Girls Chorus

Voices of Music: The San Francisco early music ensemble has increased the audiences for its excellent concert series by posting professionally filmed and recorded videos to its YouTube channel.

• Favorite performance: Dido and Aeneas
  Mindy Ella Chu (Dido), Jesse Blumberg (Aeneas), San Francisco Girls Chorus, Voices of Music conducted by Hanneke van Proosdij, produced by the San Francisco Early Music Society 2018 Berkeley Festival and Exhibition, First Congregational Church, Berkeley, seen June 7, 2018.
  
  Henry Purcell's great tragic opera Dido and Aeneas (1688?) was written to be "perform'd at Mr. Josias Priest's boarding-school at Chelsey. By young gentlewomen." There is strong evidence that in the original performances at Priest's school the young gentlewomen took all of the roles, including that of the Trojan hero Aeneas; for a debate on this question between yours truly and Voices of Music co-director and lutenist David Tayler, please see The Mysteries of Dido and Aeneas and its comments thread.
  
  For the San Francisco Early Music Society's 2018 Berkeley Festival and Exhibition, Voices of Music joined forces with the SF Girls Chorus to offer a hint of what such a performance might have sounded like. Members of the Girls Chorus took on all except the title roles, which were sung by soprano Mindy Ella Chu and baritone Jesse Blumberg. Especially delightful was Allegra Kelly's boozy Sailor, but all of the chorus members performed with exceptional skill and assurance. How closely Voices of Music and the SF Girls Chorus re-created Dido's original performances is ultimately immaterial; this production succeeded wonderfully on its own terms.

Ryan Belongie (Arsamene) and Angela Cadelago (Romilda) in Xerxes (Serse) at Berkeley West Edge Opera. Photo: Ching Chang

West Edge Opera: An adventurous company producing underperformed and contemporary operas under the artistic direction of Mark Streshinsky.

• Favorite performance: Xerxes (Serse)
  Paula Rasmussen (Serse), Angela Cadelago (Romilda), Ryan Belongie (Arsamene), Anna Slate (Atalanta), Berkeley West Edge Opera Orchestra conducted by Alan Curtis, El Cerrito High School Performing Arts Theater, seen November 21, 2010.
  
  WEO Artistic Director Mark Streshinsky's bold, campy production effectively emphasized the farcical elements of Handel's opera. And with internationally-acclaimed conductor Alan Curtis in the pit and a strong cast of new and established singers—Rasmussen also took the title role in what remains the best version of this opera on DVD, and newcomer Anna Slate almost stole the show—the musical quality of this production was extremely high (a standard the company has maintained since).

Other Favorites of 2010-2019:

• Movies and TV
• Bollywood and beyond
• Music
• Books

Favorites of 2018: Live performances

Soprano Aura Veruni, Ifigenia in Ars Minerva's Ifigenia in Aulide. Photo: Olivier Allard

Live performances

We're incredibly fortunate to live in a place where so many wonderful musical events are available to us. What follows are brief descriptions of a dozen favorite live performances from 2018: five that haven't already been discussed on this blog, followed by links to my posts about another seven that I've already written about. And limiting myself to a choice of a dozen was arbitrary; the list could easily have been much longer. In chronological order:

Capella Romana: 12 Days of Christmas in the East (St. Ignatius Cathedral, San Francisco, January 7)

On Epiphany in the festively decorated St. Ignatius Cathedral, Capella Romana performed ancient and modern compositions for the Christmas season from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. One of the things that I find especially powerful about Byzantine chant is that even at its most celebratory there is always a mournful undercurrent. It is as though in the midst of joy we are being reminded of the inevitability of suffering—also the theme of my favorite Christmas carols.

From the concert we attended, Capella Romana performing "Prokeimenon for the 1st of January":

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjcWvNDf4Oo

This year Capella Romana will be performing concert series in Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco.

Shreya Ghoshal, Bollywood Song and Dance with Dhaval and Gunjan and friends (San Francisco Public Library, March 3)

It was advertised simply as "Bollywood," buried in small print in the San Francisco Public Library's monthly newsletter of events; some digging brought me to this blog post, which invited us to "come sing along with the greatest melodies of all time" on a Saturday afternoon at the main branch of the library.

When I arrived the event was in full swing. There was a modest but appreciative audience of about 75 people watching Indian film songs being performed karaoke-style to synthesized versions of the original music. But then a woman was invited up on stage; I wasn't able to catch her name. She announced her thanks that she had been given permission to perform the next song to the actual music from the film soundtrack. I fleetingly wondered how it was that she had access to the original soundtrack without the vocal; and as she performed, the song and her voice sounded familiar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cawgTCskMgs

It wasn't until I got home and popped in a DVD or two that I confirmed that, in a basement auditorium at my local public library, I had just seen a performance by the playback singer Shreya Ghoshal. If you aren't a Bollywood fan, perhaps you don't realize how improbable that is. For her singing Shreya Ghoshal has won four National Film Awards, six Filmfare Awards, and nine Filmfare Awards South (the Filmfare Awards are often described as the Indian equivalent of the Oscars). She has performed on the soundtracks of something like 500 films. [1]

Click on the link below for the filmed version of "Mohe Rang Do Laal" from Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Bajirao Mastani (2014), picturized on Deepika Padukone and sung by Shreya Ghoshal. (The live performance video excerpt picks up around the 2:51 mark of the film version.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU3eFkY1BTI

Deepika Padukone in "Mohe Rang Do Laal" from Bajirao Mastani.

Even through the public library's sound system Shreya Ghoshal sounded great; what a privilege to be able to see her in such an intimate setting.

Rodelinda (San Francisco Conservatory of Music, March 11)

The SF Conservatory of Music Opera and Musical Theatre Program is a wonderful resource for Bay Area music lovers. We get to see talented young singers on the verge of professional careers perform in fully- or semi-staged productions accompanied by a full orchestra of talented young players on the verge of professional careers—all for free or a very low cost. And the programming by director Jose Maria Condemi and his SFCM faculty collaborators is adventurous, featuring lots of Baroque, 20th-century and contemporary opera along with excellent Broadway shows like Urinetown and Sondheim's Company.

The Spring 2018 production was Handel's Rodelinda (1725), one of his greatest works. Rodelinda is the widowed queen of Lombardy, who is sexually blackmailed by Grimoaldo, her husband Bertarido's usurper and murderer. To force Rodelinda to yield to him, Grimoaldo threatens her son, and she spends most of the opera either in sorrow or defiance. But is her husband Bertarido really dead. . .?

Handel wrote some of his most beautiful arias for Rodelinda. To give you a taste, here is Sophie Daneman performing the opening aria, "Ho perduto il caro sposo" (I have lost my beloved husband), accompanied by the Raglan Baroque Players conducted by Nicholas Kraemer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fde0REPVRA0

At SFCM soprano Karen Notovitz gave a lovely, moving performance as Rodelinda, with excellent support by Matheus Coura (Bertarido), James Hogan (Grimoaldo), and the other members of the cast. In a year that for us was filled with great opera productions, Rodelinda is still a vivid memory.

Mark Morris Dance Group: Pepperland (Cal Performances, Zellerbach Hall, September 28)

The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is not the best rock album ever recorded. It's not even the best rock album released in 1967: that would be The Velvet Underground & Nico, which came out two months before Sgt. Pepper (and which had been recorded almost a year previously). [2]

But of course Sgt. Pepper is a pop culture landmark, and last year Mark Morris was commissioned by the City of Liverpool to do a piece commemorating the album's 50th anniversary. As he said in a preconcert talk, "I misunderstood enough [of the project] to be interested in it." He was apparently intended to choreograph a piece to one song, and instead wound up doing most of the album. The Mark Morris Dance Group performs only to live music these days, so Morris in turn asked Ethan Iverson to re-imagine six songs from the album, and also compose some interstitial music to bridge the Sgt. Pepper sections. For Pepperland Iverson's group The Bad Plus (keyboards, brass, percussion and theremin) was the pit band.

Iverson's versions are recognizable but deliberately a bit askew, to enable us to hear this overfamiliar music with fresh ears. For "When I'm Sixty-Four" he sets the familiar melody over cross-rhythms of 4/4, 5/4 and (yes) 6/4. This being a Mark Morris piece, different groups of dancers moved in sync with each of the rhythms at the same time, to hilarious effect. I will never hear that song in the same way again. Elizabeth Kurtzman's costumes applied the spectrum of bright solid colors from the brass-band jackets worn by the Beatles on the album cover to clothes evoking the clean lines of Swinging London designers such as Mary Quant. As Morris also said during that preconcert talk, "I'm not interested in nostalgia. I'm interested in history."

The result was utterly delightful. Here is a brief excerpt of the "Allegro" section, which bridged "When I'm Sixty-Four" and "Within You Without You":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwqjq8LXz0w

Ars Minerva, Giovanni Porta's Ifigenia in Aulide (ODC Theater, December 1)

In the 18th century opera seria productions required the best singers and instrumentalists in the world (not to mention the best stage and costume designers and state-of-the-art theaters). Only kings and princes had enough money to sponsor opera seria, and at times even their resources weren't enough: in London in the 1730s both Handel's opera company and its rival the Opera of the Nobility went bankrupt.

I mention this to put the achievement of Ars Minerva in perspective. This fall the group, led by indefatigable Artistic Director Céline Ricci, revived Giovanni Porta's Ifigenia in Aulide, an opera seria that had not been performed in full since its premiere in 1738. For a group without the deep pockets of a major opera company to take on this task is itself astonishing; that Ars Minerva did so successfully is simply staggering.

Ifigenia in Aulide takes place just before the Trojan War. The Greek ships, massed to attack Troy, are becalmed in port after the Greek king Agamemnon kills a deer sacred to the goddess Artemis. The oracle of the gods demands the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, before favorable winds will blow. In some versions of the story Iphigenia is sacrificed; in others, Artemis descends in a cloud, rescues Iphigenia and takes her to the island of Tauris. The libretto of Apostolo Zeno for Ifigenia offers a third version that enables the "happy ending" traditional in opera seria, but which unusually retains aspects of tragedy: another character dies in place of Ifigenia. [3]

Ifigenia is remarkable not only for its semi-tragic libretto but for its music, which also defies convention. Opera seria is often thought to be highly formalized, a series of solo da capo arias after which each singer in turn exits the stage. [4] But in Act II, Ifigenia (the superb Aura Veruni) begins an angry aria addressed to Achilles (Céline Ricci), who she thinks has fallen in love with the captive Elisena (Cara Gabrielson). Ifigenia is so hurt that she abruptly leaves the stage after the first section of her aria. Achilles immediately takes up her melody and in essence completes her aria—a striking moment that suggests that, despite the breach between the characters, they are growing emotionally closer.

Porta also disrupts our expectations early in Act III, where Agamennone (a commanding Nikola Printz), Clitennestra (a fierce Shawnette Sulker) and Ifigenia sing a moving trio; in opera seria ensembles are usually placed only at the end of an act. But this trio dramatically symbolizes the situation of Ifigenia, torn between her father's demands for sacrifice and her mother's pleas to escape.

And although Porta is not nearly as well known today as his younger contemporaries Vivaldi and Handel, he wrote some beautiful music for Ifigenia. Especially notable for me were Agamennone's aria immediately following the Act III trio, in which he expresses the inner conflict he can't reveal to his daughter or wife, and Ifigenia's aria "Madre diletta, abbracciami" (Dearest mother, embrace me), in which, as her sacrifice looms, she tries to comfort her anguished mother.

Here is Joyce DiDonato performing "Madre diletta," accompanied by Il Complesso Barocco conducted by Alan Curtis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCZXigqK_is

Incidentally, Ars Minerva's performance was described in the program as semi-staged. But the setting of each scene was distinguished by Nicole Spencer Carreira's evocative projections and Jack Beuttler's atmospheric lighting, the singers were wearing Matthew Nash's postmodern costumes, and they interacted with a dramatic intensity focussed by Ricci's stage direction. She employed the clever device of a robed and masked silent Greek chorus from which characters would emerge and to which they would then return. I've seen fully staged operas in which the singers were less engaged with one another and the stage movement was less integral to the drama.

Ars Minerva should be enthusiastically applauded for the excellence of Ifigenia's musical values: the fine cast (especially the leading quartet of Veruni, Printz, Sulker and Ricci) and accompanying 10-piece orchestra led by conductor and harpsichordist Derek Tam and concertmistress Cynthia Black. But it is close to miraculous that on a tight budget Ricci and her colleagues were able to realize such an ambitious and thoughtfully-staged production. Bravi tutti!

Seven additional favorite performances that I've already written about, in chronological order:

Image: Cal Performances

Dorothea Röschmann and Malcolm Martineau (Cal Performances, Hertz Hall, February 16): A magnificent recital by these two artists that included unforgettable performances of four great song sequences: Schubert's Four Mignon Lieder, Mahler's Rückert-Lieder, Schumann's Maria Stuart Lieder, and Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder.

Image: San Francisco Girls Chorus

Dido and Aeneas, with Mindy Ella Chu (Dido), Jesse Blumberg (Aeneas), the SF Girls' Chorus and Voices of Music (Berkeley Festival and Exhibition, First Congregational Church, June 7): Collaborating with SF Girls Chorus on this semi-staged version of Purcell's great opera was a stroke of genius on the part of Voices of Music codirectors Hanneke van Proosdij and David Tayler; after all, the opera was premiered at a girls' boarding school.

Cesare (Sarah Connolly), Cleopatra (Joélle Harvey), and members of the Glyndebourne Chorus in Giulio Cesare. Photo: Glyndebourne.com

Der Rosenkavalier and Giulio Cesare (Glyndebourne Festival Opera, June 19 and 20) Striking productions of two of our favorite operas at Glyndebourne, a place we never dreamed we'd actually be able to attend.

Charles Sy (Agenore), Cheyanne Coss (Aminta), Patricia Westley (Elisa), Zhengyi Bai (Alessandro), and Simone Macintosh (Tamiri) in the Merola Opera Program's Il Re Pastore. Photo: Kristen Loken/Merola

Il Re Pastore (Merola Opera Program, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, July 21): A playful production of a rarely-performed opera by the teenaged Mozart, crisply conducted by Boston Early Music Festival co-artistic-director Stephen Stubbs and superbly sung by its young cast.

Juyeon Song and Roy Cornelius Smith in Act II of Tristan und Isolde. Photo: David Perea/Claude Heater Foundation

Tristan und Isolde (Claude Heater Foundation, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, August 26): A pickup orchestra under conductor Jonathan Khuner and a group of singers unknown to me took on Wagner's rapturous masterpiece in a performance that reached peak after peak.

The Avengers performing on the steps of the SF Public Library October 20.

The Avengers (San Francisco Public Library, October 20): Decades after opening for The Sex Pistols' final concert at Winterland, The Avengers are keeping punk rock's creative do-it-yourself ethos alive with vital and impassioned performances like this one.

Ellie Dehn as the title character in Arabella at SF Opera. Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

Arabella (San Francisco Opera, October 28): A rare chance to see a performance of one of Richard Strauss's most passionately lyrical scores, gorgeously sung and played.

More Favorites of 2018:

• Books
• Recordings
• Movies and television 

 

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1. Ghoshal's films include E & I favorite Vivah (2006), Godavari (2006), Dor (2006), Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006, one of my Favorite Bollywood Films from the 2000s), Aaja Nachle (2007), 3 Idiots (2009), Band Baaja Baaraat (2010), Love U...Mr. Kalakaar! (2011), PK (2014), and four of my Top Ten Shah Rukh Khan movies: Devdas (2002, for which she won the RD Burman Award for New Music Talent and the Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer), Paheli (2005), Om Shanti Om (2007), and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2009).
2. You don't agree? Of course not. Every generation, and indeed every person, has their own candidates for "greatest rock album," a question that can never be settled. But if you think Sgt. Pepper is the best rock album ever because it incorporated elements of musique concrète, minimalism and Indian music, The Velvet Underground & Nico got there first. And speaking of great albums, 1967 was also the year of the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Are You Experienced?, The Doors, and Aretha Franklin's I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You. 
3. Very few opere serie end with the death of one of the characters. I'm aware only of Vivaldi's Bajazet and Handel's Tamerlano, versions of the same libretto, in which the captured sultan Bajazet commits suicide.
4. A da capo aria typically has three sections: a first section that establishes an emotion, a shorter second section that contrasts with the first section, and then a return "to the top" (da capo) for a repeat of the first section with added vocal ornamentation.

The mysteries of Dido and Aeneas

Guillermo Resto (Aeneas) and Mark Morris (Dido) in the Mark Morris Dance Group's Dido and Aeneas.

Original image from markmorrisdancegroup.org.

It's remarkable that we have so little information about the greatest opera in English, Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. The scores that exist are neither complete nor original; instead, they are partial copies that don't agree with one another, made for performances that occurred decades after Purcell's death in 1695. There is only a single surviving copy of Nahum Tate's libretto from the first (or at least a very early) performance. It does not indicate who sang the roles, or even the title of the opera, and it includes sections for which the music has been lost. We are fortunate indeed that enough of the work remains to enable staged performances.

Many questions and controversies remain. As musicologist Ellen Harris has written about Dido, "we know even less than we did [30 years ago], or at least less than we had imagined. We can no longer say with certainty in what year the opera was written, where it had its premiere, who performed it or even what the original score contained — the very things that normally provide the foundation for our understanding of a piece of music." [1]

But evidence uncovered relatively recently and discussed in Harris's Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (Second edition, Oxford, 2018), has, in my view, helped to partly clarify rather than further confuse our understanding of Dido's origins. To take Harris's questions in a slightly different order:

Where was the opera first performed?

The one surviving 17th-century libretto for Dido is for "An Opera Perform'd at Mr. Josias Priest's Boarding-School at Chelsey By Young Gentlewomen."

The first page of the libretto of Dido and Aeneas printed for the Chelsea school performance (detail).

Original from the collection of the Royal College of Music.

In 1684 the young gentlewomen at Priest's school had performed John Blow and Anne Kingsmill's Venus and Adonis, the work that clearly provided a model for Dido. It is known that Venus and Adonis was first performed at court, probably in 1683; a libretto from the Chelsea school performance of Venus and Adonis states that it is "An Opera Perform'd before the King. Afterwards at Mr. Josias Priest's Boarding School at Chelsey By Young Gentlewomen."

The first page of the libretto of Venus and Adonis printed for the Chelsea school performance (detail).

Original from the collection of the Cambridge University Library.

This has led some scholars to speculate, despite a lack of direct evidence, that Dido may also have been first performed at court. A major issue with this idea is that the libretto for Dido says nothing about a court performance; its title page merely designates it "An Opera." Surely if Dido had been first performed at court the libretto would have trumpeted the fact, as the Venus libretto does.

There is one circumstance under which the Chelsea school libretto would have been silent about a previous court performance: if that court performance had occurred while James II was king, but the libretto was printed after he had been deposed in the Glorious Revolution of December 1688. That possibility has been virtually ruled out by recent developments, as we'll see in a moment. So it's most likely that no court performance ever took place, and that the performance at Priest's school was the opera's first.

Who performed the opera?

The libretto states that the opera was performed "by young gentlewomen." Dido and Aeneas, of course, is the tragic love story of Queen Dido of Carthage and Aeneas, the heroic Trojan warrior. Some scholars, perhaps perplexed or offended by the thought of a young woman portraying Aeneas, have suggested that a male singer must have been brought in to sing the role.

However, when the tragic love story Venus and Adonis was performed at Priest's school in 1684 the young gentlewomen took all the parts; a note on the libretto mentions that "Mr. Priest's Daughter acted Adonis."

John Verney's inscription on the libretto for Venus and Adonis. 

Original from the collection of the Cambridge University Library. https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=10707

So we have contemporary evidence that operas at Priest's school were performed by all-female casts, and no evidence to the contrary. It seems reasonable to assume that a similar practice was followed in staging Dido and Aeneas, and that Aeneas and the other male roles in the opera were sung by young women.

How was the opera performed?

The version of Dido that was performed at Priest's school was probably half again as long as the version that is generally performed today. The libretto for that performance includes a mythological prologue in two scenes in which Phoebus (Apollo), the sun-god, and Venus, the love-goddess, are honored and the arrival of spring is celebrated.

The prologue was clearly accompanied by music; it includes choruses and dances for Tritons, Nereids, Nymphs, shepherds and shepherdesses. [2] And most likely the prologue was preceded by its own overture. Unfortunately the music for both the prologue and its overture has been lost, as well as that for some of the dances that are indicated during the course of the opera.

After the opera a poem was recited aloud. Thomas D'Urfey's New Poems (1690) contains an "Epilogue to the Opera of DIDO and AENEAS, performed at Mr. Preist's Boarding-School at Chelsey; Spoken by the Lady Dorothy Burk." [3]

From Thomas D'Urfey's New Poems (1690), p. 82.

Original from the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery 

The surviving music of Dido takes less than an hour to perform; together, the first overture, the sung prologue, the missing dances and the spoken epilogue may have added another 25 minutes or so to the runtime.

When was the opera performed? 

The texts of both the prologue and the epilogue have been parsed for clues to the likely date of their performance. The prologue, with its scene celebrating the arrival of spring, would seem to point to a performance in April or May. Of course, it's also possible that the celebration of spring could be allegorical, and celebrate a rebirth or renewal of another kind.

For those who read the prologue allegorically, it has been suggested that Phoebus and Venus represent the king and queen (but which king and queen?). Venus is described as "the New rising star of the Ocean" and Spring "Welcomes Venus to the shore." These references have been interpreted by some to indicate that Venus is meant to represent Mary II, who had returned across the English Channel from the Netherlands in January 1689 to join her husband William after her father, James II, had fled.

D'Urfey's epilogue includes the following lines:

Rome may allow strange Tricks to please her Sons,
But we are Protestants and English Nuns,
Like nimble Fawns, and Birds that bless the Spring
Unscar'd by turning Times we dance and sing. . . [4]

From Thomas D'Urfey's New Poems (1690), p. 83.

Original from the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery 

"Rome" is generally a reference to Catholicism (James II had converted in the late 1660s). "Strange Tricks" may refer to the "warming-pan baby," the allegation that the son to whom the wife of James II, Maria of Modena, gave birth in June 1688 was not hers. According to this (almost certainly false) rumor, the warming-pan baby was a substitute infant smuggled into the birth chamber in a bed-warming pan after Maria's child was stillborn in order to insure that James could claim a Catholic heir. The arrival of that son excited fears in Parliament about the establishment of a Catholic dynasty on the British throne, and led to the secret invitation to William of Orange to invade and overthrow James. "Turning times" is thought by some to refer to the Glorious Revolution.

So based on these admittedly speculative readings of the prologue and epilogue, we have a tentative time frame for the performance of Dido and Aeneas: spring 1689, probably after the coronation of William and Mary on April 11. The mystery is solved, no?

Well, no. There are two major problems with a date of spring 1689 for the first performance of Dido. The first is that we don't know whether the libretto and the epilogue derive from the same performance; and the second is that we now know that Dido was likely performed a year or more earlier.

The Letter from Aleppo

In 2009 scholar Bryan White made a stunning archival discovery. While investigating the letters sent home from Aleppo by a music-loving English silk merchant, Rowland Sherman, White came across this passage in a letter dated February 1689 (new style; 1688 old style, when the new year was celebrated March 25):

If Harry has sett to the Harpsechord the Symph[ony] of the mask he made for Preists Ball, I should be very glad of a copie of it. There's another Symph[ony] in the same mask I think in C♭, in the 2d p[ar]t is a very neat point th[a]t moves all in quavers [eighth notes]. if he's applyed th[a]t to the harpsechord, 'twould be very acceptabl[e] too. [5]

"The mask he made for Preists Ball." Assuming that "Harry" is Henry Purcell, an acquaintance of Sherman, there is only one known dramatic entertainment he composed for Priest's school: Dido and Aeneas. If "the Symphony of the mask" refers to the overture to the prologue, then "another Symphony" may refer to the overture played before Act I of the opera. Fortunately, that overture has survived. It is in the key of C minor (C♭), and has two parts; in the second part the upper strings play chasing runs of eighth notes. In the performance that follows by the Amsterdam Bach Soloists conducted by Jan Willem De Vriend, the second part of the overture begins about 50 seconds in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiqT5CA9q3Q

So Sherman must have been familiar with the score of Dido and Aeneas before he sailed to Aleppo. It was a journey that took almost three months, and Sherman arrived at the bay of Scandroon (Iskenderun) in late October 1688. White has determined that Sherman must have sailed from London no later than the end of July, 1688.

If Dido was made for Priest's school, there was no court performance. And if the score was written before July 1688 it seems unlikely that it wasn't performed until a full year later. In the allegorical prologue, Phoebus and Venus could as easily refer to James II and Maria of Modena as to William and Mary. So on the evidence of Sherman's letter it seems that the first performance of the opera was in spring 1688 or earlier.

But what about D'Urfey's epilogue published in 1690 (or late 1689) with its references to "Rome," "strange tricks" and "turning times"? If the epilogue was performed in spring 1688 or earlier it obviously couldn't allude to the Glorious Revolution; if it wasn't performed until 1689, how can Sherman's familiarity with Dido's score in 1688 be explained?

The Letters of John Verney

The letters of John Verney may shed some light on these questions. Verney was a silk merchant living in London; his wife's family lived in Little Chelsea, not far from Priest's school. Verney's niece Mary attended Priest's beginning in August 1683, when she was eight years old. John Verney wrote to his brother Edmund, Mary's father, who lived well outside London, about how Mary was doing at the school. Verney mentions Mary's performances in Priest's "Grande Balles"; from these references we know that balls were held on 17 April 1684 (when Venus and Adonis was performed), 21 May 1685, 15 and 22 April 1686, and 1 December 1687.

Harris suggests that there may have been at least two performances of Dido at Priest's school: one before July 1688, and one in 1689 (probably in the spring). For the date of the first performance both she and White choose 1 December 1687, the last documented school ball before Sherman's departure from England in July 1688. However, there are no letters from John to Edmund Verney between December 1687 and August 1688, and in any case Mary was probably withdrawn from Priest's school in February 1688 because of Edmund's difficulties in paying the fees. So if there was a ball in spring 1688 (as seems highly probable) it would not be documented in Verney's letters.

I am less convinced than Harris and White that Dido was first performed in December 1687. For one thing, the prologue is full of spring imagery; for another, by the date of his letter in February 1689 would Sherman remember so vividly (and be so excited about receiving the music for) a piece that he had heard 14 months previously? It seems to me more likely that there was a school ball in spring 1688 at which Dido was performed and where Sherman encountered the music.

And D'Urfey's epilogue certainly suggests that there was a performance in 1689 as well. Not only are there the cryptic references that may allude to the Glorious Revolution, but it is known that D'Urfey was employed as a singing-master at Priest's school in the summer of 1689, the most likely circumstance for him to supply a poem to be performed during a school ball. [6]

So: in my view the most probable scenario is a first performance in spring 1688, and a repeated performance with the addition of D'Urfey's epilogue in May or early June 1689. The mysteries of Dido and Aeneas are not quite solved; documentary evidence for both of these occasions is still lacking. But based on the evidence we do have, at least this sequence of events is plausible.

Aeneas and Dido (detail), by Pierre-Narcisse, Baron Guérin (1815)

Dido and Aeneas performed by young gentlewomen

As part of the 2018 Berkeley Festival and Exhibition of early music Dido and Aeneas will be performed by the San Francisco Girls Chorus accompanied by the instrumental ensemble Voices of Music on June 7 and June 9; see the Berkeley Festival website for details. The website states that "this concert is a recreation of what may have been heard" at Priest's school; since a male singer, Jesse Blumberg, will perform the role of Aeneas, that claim is doubtful. Nonetheless, I hope my San Francisco Bay Area readers will not miss the opportunity to hear this brilliant and moving work.

Update 22 December 2018: Harris' Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas was selected for my Favorites of 2018: Books. The BFX performance of Dido and Aeneas by Mindy Ella Chu, Jesse Blumberg, the SF Girls Chorus and Voices of Music was included in my posts Why we live in cities part 2: Exceptional musical performances and Favorites of 2018: Live performances.

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1. Ellen Harris, "The More We Learn About ‘Dido and Aeneas,’ the Less We Know." New York Times, 15 December 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/arts/music/dido-aeneas-purcell.html
2. Nahum Tate. Dido and Aeneas: Prologue. http://home.olemiss.edu/~mudws/courses/dido.html
3. Thomas D'Urfey, New Poems, 1690, pp. 82-83. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A37001.0001.001/1:26?rgn=div1;view=fulltext 
4. D'Urfey, New Poems, p. 83. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A37001.0001.001/1:26?rgn=div1;view=fulltext
5. Bryan White. "Letter from Aleppo: dating the Chelsea School performance of Dido and Aeneas." Early Music, vol. 37 no. 3, 2009, pp. 417-428. https://doi.org/10.1093/em/cap041
6. How D'Urfey wound up teaching at Priest's school is unknown. He was notorious for his bawdy songs and verse: New Poems includes "A True Tale of a True Intrigue," in which the poet describes being discovered in bed with two sisters; "A Dialogue between a Town Spark and his Miss," about what to do with their child born out of wedlock; "Paid for Peeping: A Poem, Occasion'd by a Peeping hole into a Chamber where a Beautiful and Virtuous young Lady Lodg'd, through which undiscover'd, I could observe all her Actions"; and two lewd ditties "set by Mr. Hen. Purcell" about husbands' difficulties in sexually satisfying their wives. He is a curious choice as a singing teacher for adolescent girls.