Remembering Her

Thanks to Dido's Lament and Virgil's ambiguously sympathetic portrayal of her in The Aeneid, Dido is one of the few tragic heroines who might escape from the patriarchal hegemony of classical mythology. Claudia Molitor's decision to pair her with Eurydice - far more of a cypher in her story, a foil to Orpheus's grand passion - consciously deconstructs the scope of scale of both opera and mythology - and converts the lineal narrative of their dramas in to an allusive, fragmented, intimate reinvention.

In her notes, Molitor explains that the inspiration for Remember Me came as much from a gift - her grandmother's desk - as the big stories. Opening the desk, she realised that the interior was possibly the "only physical space she could have truly called her own." From this, a re-examination of Dido makes sense: despite Purcell and Virgil enhancing her in their respective portrayals of this Queen of Carthage, she is always dependent on the larger drama of her beloved Aeneas.

Molitor refuses the grand scale of opera - played out in two rooms, a mixture of video projection, intimate solo performance, recorded music and 'object manipulation' (Molitor, as performer, arranges familiar items around the desk to create a model of an operatic set), Remember Me is poignant rather than melodramatic. Cheeky touches - Cinderella helps out with the plot by Dido and Eurydice to rescue themselves, and an ink bottle stands in for Aeneas - emphasise Molitor's light touch, although the final action - a whispered plea - is both emotive and intimate.

The rejection of both simple rewriting of myth - Dido's ultimate plan is never fully articulated - and the grandeur of opera suggests that the recreation of mythology for a more inclusive era will not imitate existing art, but replace it with something more tentative.

Quick mention of Sonica and I, Tommy (inappropriate comparisons?)

Art - performance, music, painting, film, mixed-media, multi-platform, improvisation or scripted - can pose two sets of questions. One set concentrates on the formal matters - how does this piece relate to the  nature of art? The other emphasises questions of content - what is it about, and how does it present the subject? A third set of questions - discussing how do the content and form relate to each other - emerges from these.

Both Remember Me (Claudia Molitor) and Sandglasses (Juste Janulyte), the opening blasts of Sonica, pose more questions about form than function. Remember Me does have a fairly explicit feminist content, re-imagining the myths of two operatic heroines, but the restructuring of their stories is part of Molitor's broader re-invention of how contemporary composition can be experienced. And for all Sandglasses promises of exploring "the acoustic, visual and symbolic meanings of sand-timers," it is predominantly an aesthetic experience as the spectacular visuals illustrate the microtonal drone of four cellos.

By comparison with I, Tommy, the savage satire of Glaswegian socialist and swinger Tommy Sheridan, Remember Me and Sandglasses have slight content: I, Tommy is all content, and little aesthetic. Equally, the music-hall antics of the play are at the exact opposite of the stark minimalism of the two sound pieces. Yet in this comparison, their worth becomes clearer: rather than encourage rapid, emotional responses, Remember Me and Sandglasses offer meditations on themes that are beautiful and cerebral.