Senior Lydia Steier to Direct Purcell's Baroque Masterpiece Dido and Aeneas to be performed Friday and Saturday, May 19 and 20, 8 P.M., in Warner Main Space By Rhiannon Giddens
	back to the main story		The Cast Dido and Aeneas features Oberlin Conservatory students in all roles. Principal cast members include Dido cast members Dido (Alyson Cambridge '01); Aeneas (Joseph Greaves '02); Belinda (Ariadne Votava '00); Sorceress (Marc Callahan '00); 1st Lady (Tess Wakim '01); 2nd Lady (Marcia Davis '00); 1st Witch (Florence Gill '01); 2nd Witch (Marcy Stonikas '02); Oberlin students round out the chorus. Synopsis Dido and Aeneas, based on books of Virgil's Aeneid, is set in Carthage at the court of Queen Dido. Her courtiers and sister, Belinda, persuade her to admit her love for Aeneas, a Trojan prince who has stopped in Carthage on his travels and is dallying with her. Witches plot the downfall of Dido and her city, and arrange to raise a storm so that the two lovers, who are out hunting, will be forced to seek shelter in a cave. There one of the witches, disguised as Mercury, the messenger god, will remind Aeneas of his duty to resume his voyage to Italy. He is persuaded to leave and makes preparations. He tries to explain his destiny to Dido, but she brushes his explanations aside and makes ready for her death. Director's Comments Stark, angular movements mark the stage movement in Dido and Aeneas. The intention is to create a non-empathetic, movement based (yet narrative) form of theater. Actual physical gestures are borrowed from ancient sources - most frequently adapted from photographs of the frescoes and sculptures of ruined Pompeii and Herculaneum. These human shapes are then pared down, becoming sharper and more unnatural, and are thus themselves exploited for their sculptural elements, independent of both contexts of source and present use. The purpose of this particular stage picture is to prompt audiences to observe Dido and Aeneas for its basic structural and formal beauty. For this opera, the stage is impermeable - that is to say that emotional projection into the story is intentionally hindered. The movements and shapes of the performers are designed to preserve an inherent distance between action and audience. This type of built-in reserve is elemental in baroque opera. For our purposes, Dido and Aeneas mixes ancient and modernist influences to create a unified, sculptural and contextually aloof vision of Virgil's story. Dido's production staff includes stage manager Polly Seashore '00; assistant stage manager Dea Lunsford '00; scene designer Lydia Steier; technical director Alec Longstreth '02; lighting designer Jen Groseth, lecturer in theater; and choreographer Dana Kotler ('00). Bios: Lydia Steier (Director), is a senior vocal performance and independent opera directing double major at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Steier's directing work has achieved prominence at Oberlin within the last few years; she has staged nearly twenty acting and opera scenes. In addition to directing the 1999 Winter Term Opera, The Medium, Steier served as set and costume designer for the production. Most recently, she arranged the first official collaboration between Opera Theater and Historical Performance departments in SCORN a program of baroque opera scenes focusing on the scorned woman in classical literature and mythology. This production is being considered for two grants offered through the publication of Early Music America. Steier, a native of Hartford, Connecticut, began her studies in this field with John Norris of the Mannes School, assisting him during the Hartt School of Music's Summer Vocal Academy beginning in 1993, at the age of 14. Since then, she has been instructed in opera stage techniques and theories by Steven Daigle of the Eastman School, Jonathon Field, artistic director of Lyric Opera Cleveland, as well as the Ohio Light Opera's James Stuart. After graduation, Steier hopes to continue her studies in directing, seeking out venues and institutions where she will be able to explore and expand her unique vision for the stage. Michael Sponseller (Music Director) began studying the harpsichord at age 13. His studies with professor of Harpsichord Lisa Goode Crawford at the Oberlin Conservatory, led to his Bachelor of Music in 1997 and Artist Diploma in 2000. He also received a Certificaat from the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, the Netherlands. He has participated in the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, working with conductors Christopher Hogwood and Kenneth Slowik. Sponseller has performed throughout the U.S. and abroad as both soloist and chamber musician, including appearances at the Smithsonian Institution, the Berliner Tage für Alte Musik, and the Berkley Early Music Festival. In 1998 he took First Prize at the American Bach Soloists International Harpsichord Competition. That same year, he was a prizewinner in the International Harpsichord Competition in Bruges, Belgium. In 1999, Mr. Sponseller joined the American Bach Soloists in several concerts, and recently recorded several J.S. Bach Harpsichord concerti with that ensemble, due to be released in 2000. Recently, he was awarded Second Prize at the Concours International de Clavecin de Montreal, Canada, also performing at the Boston and Edinburgh Festivals and with the Mark Morris Dance Group, as well as with Apollo's Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra. He was also appointed Teacher of the Harpsichord at the Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music.
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