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Surrounded By the Dead We Listen to Opera
The Angels Share with Greenwood Cemetery produced quite an incredible performance of Dido and Aeneas, music by Henry Purcell and libretto by Nahum Tate with additional texts by the great Christopher Marlowe. Deep inside the tunnel of a fabulously haunting mausoleum robust mezzo-soprano, Daniela Mack played a bold and passionate Dido, Queen of Carthage, while baritone Paul La Rosa gave a vibrant performance as her love interest, Aeneas, Wandering Prince of Troy. The outstanding performance of the night, however, belonged to Vanessa Cariddi a mezzo-soprano of extraordinary gifts, an exceptional practitioner of song and a fabulously enchanting ghoulish sorceress. Her natural gifts are embellished by her pointed technical skills as an opera singer. Accompanying her were the very audacious and delightful Alyssa Martin and Erin Moll. They displayed their talents as witches as though the parts had been made to be cooked in their cauldrons alone. They are singers and performers with a fabulousness of the best effects performed in the majestic tombs which house early New York Dutch settlers of the Van Rensselaer family. Unique and enchanting Angels Share impresario Andrew Ousley presented another spectacular performance for lovers of the otherworldly.
