On March 18 I was fortunate to be able to attend Early Music Vancouver’s performance of George Frideric Handel’s Apollo e Dafne, written in 1709-1710. The music was directed by Alexander Weimann, and performed by the Pacific Baroque Orchestra at the Vancouver Playhouse.
Handel’s Apollo e Dafne tells quite a curious story. The story is based on one told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and consists of the God Apollo being struck by Cupid’s arrow and subsequently falling for a beautiful nymph named Dafne. Dafne rebuffs the God’s advances because she loves Apollo’s sister, the Goddess Diana, and is faithful to her alone. Apollo disregards Dafne’s love and fidelity toward his sister and insists she should be with him instead. Dafne continues to flee from him, and just as Apollo seizes her she turns into a laurel tree. Apollo decides that since he cannot have Dafne, he will form her leaves into crowns for heroes.
It struck me as quite a bizarre story. Dafne’s feelings and love are completely disregarded in favour of Apollo’s; he expects her to abandon her own life and love in order to conform to his and to be a submissive receptacle for his male feelings. I suppose the moral of the story is that the only way to escape entitled, misogynistic men is to turn into a tree.
Apollo e Dafne is one of the only opera performances I have ever been to, so it was a new experience for me. As an actor, I am accustomed to performances having a large visual component; however, for this opera performance the emphasis was certainly on auditory aspects. The stage was as simple as possible with the orchestra members sitting and standing in a half-circle formation facing the audience, and the orchestra was composed of a variety of string and woodwind instruments.
The first half of the performance consisted of an instrumental performance by the orchestra who were joined later on by soprano Yulia Van Doren and bass-baritone Douglas Williams as Dafne and Apollo, respectively. To be honest, I really wasn’t sure what was going on in the first half of the show; I was following the script in the program which had an English translation for Dafne and Apollo’s lines, but these were sung in the second half, insofar as I can tell. It was very beautiful music and Van Doren and Williams both have amazing voices.
I found the second half of the show very interesting; it was certainly a splendid and emotional performance. As I mentioned, the story itself is an unfortunate misogynistic narrative, but both Van Doren and Williams played their parts beautifully. I found Williams’ performance especially compelling; he seemed to embody Apollo in his stature as well as his voice. Van Doren’s performance as Dafne was more subtle, as dictated by the nature of Handel’s opera, but she played a demure and faithful Dafne very convincingly.
You can learn more about upcoming shows on the Early Music Vancouver website