O18 Festival: Opera Philadelphia presents John Jarboe's 'Dito & Aeneas'

For much of the performance — written and staged once again by John Jarboe — mezzo Stephanie Blythe (Blythely) and actor Dito van Reigersberg (Martha) found themselves in separate spheres of the Theatre for Living Arts (TLA). Blythely held court on the concert stage, attended by a bevy of scantily clad assistants. Martha moved from the balcony to a makeshift platform on the dance floor, supported by a pair of backup singers called Bey (Rachel Camp) and Linda (Rob Tucker).

The audience stood between them, approximating a mosh pit. Prior to the performance, we were handed blue-ribboned wands and instructed to wave them whenever someone mentioned water. Essentially, we became the sea separating these passionate but doomed lovers.

Bohemian rhapsody

Despite the rock-concert setup and vibe, I can imagine little more operatic. And in general, Dito & Aeneas nodded to classical forms more deeply than either Blythe’s or van Reigersberg’s previous outings in this series. Keen operagoers probably got a chuckle out of the names of Martha’s helpers: smash them together and you have Belinda, the faithful servant in Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, who tends her mistress as she moves toward a lovelorn suicide.

In her guise as tempestuous tenor Blythely, Blythe once again offered ardent interpretations of Italian male arias, sung more or less in the written key. Hell, I preferred her “Recondita Armonia,” from Puccini’s Tosca, to the crass version I heard at the Philadelphia Orchestra earlier this year. I couldn’t help but think that if Placido Domingo can now sing any baritone role he wishes, why shouldn’t Blythe — or Blythely — take on Cavaradossi?

I previously opined that Martha, in her own act, seemed uninterested in marrying opera to her drag aesthetic. Thankfully, she more than made up for her prior reticence here. The evening’s highlight was a disco-tinged rendition of “Der hölle rache,” the Queen of the Night’s histrionic showpiece from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, in which Martha turned the aria’s perilous coloratura passagework into something akin to scat singing.

Martha also put her own spin on “When I Am Laid in Earth,” Dido’s dying aria, sung as she prepares to immolate. Her interpretation played up the campiness inherent in the piece, with Bey and Linda fake-dousing her from a comically oversized can of gasoline. (Throughout the evening, Camp and Tucker were game participants and fabulous singers). Thankfully, it stopped short of mere tongue-in-cheek waggishness.

"Cultural commingling"

Van Reigersberg possesses a strong, dusky singing voice, perfect to shade the aria’s simple text with layers of meaning and feeling. At times, the version here recalled Jeff Buckley’s haunting interpretation. It represented an ideal confluence of opera, drag, and the rock’n’roll vibe that often underlies Martha Graham Cracker performances.

That strong sense of cultural comingling defines not just Dito & Aeneas but Opera Philadelphia’s general mission of late. The company’s conscious efforts to wrest the aged art form from the mothballs has already begun paying dividends.

The crowd at TLA found hipsters rubbing elbows with big-ticket donors. They swooned equally for Blythely’s “Celeste Aida” and Martha’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” David Devan, the company’s general director and president, donned a pair of clip-on rhinestone earrings and a choker — a departure from his usual bowties and slim-fit suits.

After the performance ended, they stayed for a dance party deejayed by Manifest Love. You won’t find that at most operas after the curtain falls. Yet, in this instance, it felt utterly right.