(OPERATIC SINGING)
Dido and Aeneas is a Baroque opera by Henry Purcell.
It talks about a myth that Aeneas,
on his way out of the burning Troy,
left and travelled over the Mediterranean
and took a stop in Carthage,
where the Queen of Carthage, Dido, is reigning
and they fall in love.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC / OPERATIC SINGING)
There are actually very happy there
until he gets a call from the gods
that he has to keep on going
because it's his fate to sail to Italy,
so he's very caught between his love
and his duty towards actually society.
It's like a bigger scale of responsibility
towards his people and his country.
It's a drastic opera, because Dido is so heartbroken
that she kills herself.
(OPERATIC SINGING)
What Sasha has done, which is really clever,
is work with the singers of the opera
and give them dance training, and vice versa.
So the chorus will all move as dancers
and the singers, the soloists, will all move as dancers,
and all the dancers will become the chorus,
so you get these beautiful integrated scenes.
And then, of course, she understands the magic of theatre,
so she has a couple of, I wouldn't say theatre tricks
but certainly beautiful imagery up her sleeve that she can use
and can drag you into the magic of the story.
And even just the prologue of the opera,
which was a lost piece of music that has been reconstructed,
she brings that most spectacular image,
which is bringing onstage a 7.5-tonne water-filled aquarium.
The dancers come onstage, dive into the aquarium,
and they actually dance underwater in front of your eyes.
(OPERATIC SINGING)
I tried to make a very contemporary version of a Baroque opera
not using historic costumes but, like, making more a quote on them.
And there has been quite a lot of paintings in art history,
so we play with that,
but we transform it a lot and it's very, very alive
and playful, also.
Mm-hm! It's not bad, but, uh...
- Yeah, it's not bad! - (LAUGHTER)
- (MUFFLED SPEECH) - Yah!
They're really deep!
Ah, yes! I got it!
And then it's also quite extraordinary,
because there's an ancient music orchestra,
Academy of Music,
and it's really one of the highest levels of orchestras
that are playing on original instruments,
and they have a very beautiful, warm sound,
like an amber sound,
and I try to break open the hierarchy,
because there's a definite hierarchy between the soloists and the choir,
and I really try to form one group.
(OPERATIC SINGING)
We opened this piece in 2005
and so we've been touring quite a bit all over with this piece,
and I'm very happy that it's also still almost our original cast
and the dancers are just two dancers that are replaced.
The singers love to work with the dancers
and the dancers love to work with the choir and the singers.
And it's also a very playful piece, even if it's very serious and tragic.
It's very colourful and sensual,
and it has a lot of very different facets
so, usually, people are quite excited to see it!
(JOYOUS MUSIC)