Opera | Dance

Choreographer Mark Morris, who has captivated audiences for over 35 years with his unwavering commitment to music, returns to BAM with a career-spanning double bill that perfectly embodies his trademark blend of emotion and rhythm, movement and music. First, clad in all-white, the vocalists and orchestra of the MMDG Music Ensemble unite onstage to tell Benjamin Britten’s haunting parable of maternal grief in the oft-overlooked music-drama Curlew River. Then, sweeping across the stage in jet-black sarongs, the members of Mark Morris Dance Group revive their seminal 1989 interpretation of Dido and Aeneas, Henry Purcell’s Baroque tragedy of ill-fated love, with mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe performing the roles of Dido and the Sorceress and Morris himself on the podium.