Purcell - Dido and Aeneas / Mark Morris Dance Group
by Barbara Willis Sweete
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Ann Monoyios, Jennifer Lane, Meredith Hall, Russell Braun, Shari SaundersDirector: Barbara Willis Sweete
Cinematographer: Milan Podsedly
Producer: Niv Fichman
Writer: Mark Morris
Writer: Publius Vergilius Maro
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language), PCM Stereo
Format: Classical, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 56 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-04-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Purcell - Dido and Aeneas / Mark Morris Dance Group
DVD Review: Adventurous and eccentric...
Summary: 4 Stars
The dancing is very emotion, I have no problem with different gender roles, but as stated below; the guy looks like a drag queen. I think it'd be more fitting if we just had a normal looking guy play the role as Dido or women for it's sake. The music is absolutely astounding, epic, and cognizant of the storyline. It's very eerie, upright, depressing, melancholy; yet a reign of it's oppression can transform into happiness. I would not pay $200 for it (as people are selling it for), and I rented it off Netflix for only 10 bucks a month, don't be cheated out. This would be getting a five stars if not for the ridiculous look of the male playing Dido. DVD Review: Two Masterpieces in One, but Don't Buy from Scalpers!
Summary: 5 Stars
Mark Morris and his dance group are absolutely wonderful, and the music is gorgeous. But don't buy this DVD from scalpers. If you are an individual buying for home use, you can get a video at a much more reasonable price from Bullfrog Films. In fact, even if you are buying the video for an institution, you can get it from Bullfrog for less than what the scalpers are asking. In addition, I've been told that Morningstar Entertainment will be distributing the DVD within a couple of months. DVD Review: Great Music, but...
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this because I love the music, and because it's played by Tafelmusik. But like another reviewer, I haven't been able to watch much of it. The singing and playing are wonderful, but the dancing...I just can't take this big guy with the ponytail as Queen Dido. I don't mind gender-bending per se, but the whole thing looks like a drag queen performance. It's so distracting that I just can't watch it. What a disappointment, cuz it sounds great.DVD Review: Beautiful!
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a beautiful and moving production. The singing is very good and the orchestra sounds fantastic. The concept and choreography are perfection. There is nothing odd or unfathomable about the movement. Morris is practically literal to the text and score with his gestures and steps. It is his forte. [His masterpiece of this type of interpretation of Baroque music is "L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato"] Why it doesn't just come across as dumb is because he is right on the money and possesses great wit and invention.I take back one star for casting. Morris dances Dido very well, but I just kept wanting to see a female form there doing the choreography. I have nothing against gender bending....one of the witches is a man [as is the sorceress played by Dido.....or Morris]....supernatural characters can be anybody. But Belinda is cast female and Aeneas looks like he stepped off a red figure vase. I want to see Dido with a women's hips and shape and not the broad shoulders and big arms of a man.
Still, a DVD worth owning and viewing over and over.
DVD Review: Grace and Passion
Summary: 4 Stars
Henry Purcell's music lends itself well to modern styles of interpretation. Perhaps that's down to its forthright nature. Purcell could write a melody to break your heart, but he never succumbed to mere prettiness. There are taut sinews not far beneath the surface of everything he wrote.Mark Morris' choreography and his personal approach to movement recognise the angularity of Purcell's compositional style and make the most of it. You won't find much prettiness here - or even elegance - but you will find grace and passion.
The performace is superbly filmed, maintaining a fine balance between close-ups of the principals one one hand and showing the overall shape of the dance on the other. I personally found the occasional inclusion of the singers in-shot to be intrusive, but I appreciate that other reviewers have liked this.
Technically the DVD is OK. There are a few speckles near the end, but the colour and clarity are both good. A gripe, though - the picture is 1.88:1 letterboxed, not anamorphic, so there is a vertical resolution of less than 300 lines, which is worse than TV in the 1960s! There is no region coding, which is handy. The subtitles are on by default - irritating! - but can be switched off.
The sound is uncompressed PCM stereo of good quality. It's not afraid to present the sound of the dancers' feet on the stage so you could never listen to the soundtrack by itself.
Description of Purcell - Dido and Aeneas / Mark Morris Dance Group
A danced opera. This adaptation of the critically acclaimed and provocative dance production by Mark Morris takes a fresh and controversial approach to the baroque operatic masterwork written in 1689 by Henry Purcell. Dido, the noble Queen of Carthage, has fallen in love with the Trojan Prince Aeneas. While the court celebrates the imminent union of the two monarchs, the evil sorceress with her coven of witches plots their downfall. Romance leads to heartbreak and tragedy. Dido and Aeneas stars Mark Morris himself in the dual roles of Dido and the sorceress, and the supporting roles are performed by the incomparable Mark Morris Dance Group. Tafelmusik, the award-winning Toronto-based baroque orchestra, provides accompaniment to a superb cast of vocal soloists, including the great American mezzo-soprano Jennifer Lane as the singing counterpart to Mark Morris. 56?minutes.Ancient and modern elements are oddly but beautifully blended in this production, which presents a cutting-edge modern dance interpretation of the oldest English opera still in the active repertoire, Dido and Aeneas. Purcell took his subject from The Aeneid, Virgil's Latin epic about the destruction of Troy and the founding of Rome by a party of refugees from the fallen city. In the episode chosen by Purcell (by far the best-known in the lengthy poem), Aeneas, leader of the Trojan refugees, lands at Carthage, falls in love with the city's widowed Queen Dido, but goes on to fulfill his destiny in Italy while the abandoned queen commits suicide. Tafelmusik, an excellent Canadian chamber orchestra, performs baroque music with the distinctive sound of period instruments. Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Lane sings the dual roles of Dido and the jealous sorceress whose spells destroy the queen's liaison with Aeneas. These roles are both danced by Mark Morris. The video production gives occasional glimpses of singers, but the overwhelming emphasis is, rightly, on the dancing.
Morris is equally impressive as a solo dancer and a choreographer. He has given his ensemble a strikingly expressive choreographic vocabulary, with gestures that are rooted in spontaneous body language and frequently call to mind ancient Greco-Roman visual arts. He is one of the relatively few choreographers who actually listen to the music and translate it precisely into stage action. His treatment of Dido and Aeneas is a classic, and the film directing of Barbara Willis Sweete preserves its classic qualities. --Joe McLellan
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