MUSIC REVIEWS : Baroque Orchestra Opens Season With Purcell Opera

Restoring the work of past masters, be it Michelangelo, Schubert or Howard Hawks, is cutting edge these days. Henry Purcell got the treatment Saturday at the Water Garden in Santa Monica when the period-instrument, period-practice Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra opened its 10th season with a concert version of the English composer’s opera masterpiece “Dido and Aeneas.”

And like those other restorations, this new “Dido” didn’t so much take one back in time as it did bring the artwork into ours. Under the accomplished direction of Gregory Maldonado, “Dido” sounded as if the ink was still wet on the page.

Just over 300 years old, Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” is amazing--simple, direct, powerful. Throwing off the influences of Italian elaboration and French spectacle, Purcell fashioned a truly English opera out of jigs and tunes disarming in their charm and attractiveness. Yet he set the words and drama so artfully--the emotions, not his musical craft, right on the surface--that when “Dido’s Lament” breaks out in all its tears at the end (and here, notably, Purcell pulls out the stops on his musical technique), we feel all wrapped up and wrung out.

Virginia Sublett gave a fluid, dark, word-clear and expressively concise performance of Dido. Kris Gould provided a bright, undulating Belinda and Daniel Plaster a solid Aeneas. Soloists, chorus and orchestra worked neatly and gracefully. Maldonado led with equal parts dash and sensitivity, finding just the right stresses to send a musical line bounding forward. A facsimile of the original libretto was provided to all--a nice touch.

The first half of the program featured Purcell’s incidental music to Aphra Behn’s “Abdelazar, or The Moor’s Revenge” and his ode “Celestial Music Did the Gods Inspire.” The reverberant atrium of the Water Garden is not the best place for this group or music, but then 17th-Century buildings are a bit scarce in L.A.