Katie Mitchell explains to Henrietta Bredin how she is creating a parallel film world with Purcell’s opera
It is 350 years since Henry Purcell was born and his music is, gloriously, being played and sung all around the country. And there are a lot of different Didos about: Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage at the National Theatre; Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas pretty much all day on BBC Radio Three a couple of weekends ago; at the Royal Opera House in a joint venture by the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet directed and choreographed by Wayne McGregor (see review page 38); and, in another joint venture, by English National Opera and the Young Vic, as After Dido, directed by Katie Mitchell.
Gerard Manley Hopkins rhymes Purcell with rehearsal but I don’t think he could have imagined the space in which I meet Katie Mitchell during a break in the sixth week of a seven-week preparation period.
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