Choreographer Mark Morris to bring “Dido and Aeneas” to Purdue
“Dido and Aeneas,” will bring Henry Purcell’s famous baroque opera to life with a live chamber orchestra, vocalists and dancers under the baton of storied choreographer Mark Morris on Saturday, April 2 at 8 p.m.
This performance is presented with Friends support from the Jeanne Compton Endowment for Artistic Excellence.
Ticket holders are invited to attend a pre-show discussion at 7 p.m., location TBA. A member of the Mark Morris Dance Group artistic team will discuss “Dido and Aeneas” and the company’s aesthetic.
American choreographer Mark Morris loves music. In fact, there are arguably no other “dancermakers” working today who have so successfully used their musical intellect to illuminate, transform, and even expand the greatness of each masterwork they’ve embraced. Landmark works by Mozart, Handel, Haydn, Vivaldi, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, and more have captured Morris’s imagination and been given revelatory treatment with his singular vision, sprawling energy, and powerful expressions of both the human body and the human condition. Now, in the remounting of “Dido and Aeneas”— Virgil’s famous tale of Aeneas’s affair with Dido, the Queen of Carthage, en route to founding Rome— Morris has elevated British composer Henry Purcell’s famous 1688 opera into mythic love-story territory.
This extraordinary production—which includes one of the greatest opera arias of all time, the haunting “Dido’s Lament”—brings the full baroque opera to life with a live chamber orchestra and vocalists under Morris’s baton, while the dancers reveal both the humor and the tragedy of the tale with Morris’s signature visual flair. “Dido” originally premiered in 1989 during Morris’s legendary three-year post at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, in Brussels, Belgium—a period that established him as a larger-than-life creative force capable of drawing new insights from seemingly familiar works. Today, nearly four decades after his debut, Mark Morris remains one of America’s leading artists and storytellers—and “Dido and Aeneas” one of his most spellbinding works.
Tickets for the Mark Morris Dance Group
Saturday, April 2, Elliott Hall of Music
Buy Tickets
$24-49 for adults
$24-34 for children 18 years and younger, Purdue students and Ivy Tech Lafayette students
Tickets are available at the Stewart Center box office at 765-494-3933 or 800-914-SHOW. Group tickets are also available to groups of 10 more. Call 765-496-1977 for more details or visit Group Sales for more information.