Toronto Masque Theatre: Dido and Aeneas/Aeneas and Dido

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Toronto Masque Theatre, under Artistic Director Larry Beckwith, has a mandate to blend the performing arts together to recreate the ethos of a Renaissance or Baroque masque while not being chained to any period. TMT's latest show was an inspired double bill of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and the world premiere of Aeneas and Dido by composer James Rolfe and librettist Andre Alexis.

Both operas look at the love affair between the widowed Queen of Carthage and her Trojan visitor, and Aeneas's betrayal of that love. Cleverly, the new opera deliberately used the same vocal types and chorus as Purcell, duplicating the instruments of that composer's small Baroque ensemble. It was a …