Heard again, made familiar on the voice of one of its own key players, the story of the fall of Troy binds Dido's heart to the fate of a single man and engenders a new fall, both personal and civic: as Dido succumbs to distraction, so does the yet-to-be-completed city of Carthage. Dido falls in love with a twice-told tale: what she hears from the lips of Aeneas is a text already written in her heart and painted on the temple walls of her new city. We are less interested in elaborating the story of erotic passion for its own sake than in using that passion as a vehicle for exploring the stress fractures of inherited memory and collective longing. Linda Gregerson: "Dido compels us as an organizing center of consciousness and narrative because, in Virgil's epic and its many heirs, she is at once an agent of empire and its most conspicuous discard, a figure of collusion and a searing example of collateral damage. A collage of memories, reflections, and moments create a portrait.
What would Dido say? As she watched his ships depart? As she listened to his story? As she concocts the scheme to expand the oxhide and found a city? These were the kinds of questions to which Linda Gregerson eloquently and powerfully imagined answers – words. Later, in a pilgrimage to the underworld, Aeneas discovers Dido and attempts to talk to her – Dido refuses to speak. Recalled to his divine mission to found the city of Rome, Aeneas abandons Dido, and as she watches his ships sail off, she builds an escarpment and immolates herself. With Cupid’s manipulation, Dido and Aeneas fall in love. After fleeing Troy, Aeneas lands on her shores where he and his fellow survivors find refuge. Ingeniously, she shaved the oxhide into thin strips encompassing an area large enough to found a city – Carthage, of which she became the queen. There, she bought from the inhabitants, as much land as she could “fit into an oxhide”. Phoenician Dido escaped from her brother (who had murdered her husband) to what is now Tunisia in northern Africa. A momentum of escape – a whirlwind – a broken compass – calm within the storm gives clarity of purpose, strength, and direction – a new momentum towards someplace, someone. “She” is city, country, home, a loved one. ".a haunting distillation of drama without words." (Lament: The Fallen City from Gates of Silence) - Steve Smith, The New York TimesĪeneas embarks on two perilous sea journeys – first in fleeing Troy, and second in departing Carthage. The memory of a gospel song/chant (“…I’m goin’ thru, no matter what the problem is, I’m goin’ thru…”) is woven into the anguish and fear transforming helplessness into hope. Spirits of the fallen and the future urge us forward. Fitzgerald) We are compelled to retell the story. Virgil begins the story of the fall of Troy with the words: “Sorrow, too deep to tell… feel and tell once more” (trans. Finally, in Dido Refuses to Speak, each moment is a new “present” reality and a memory simultaneously.Ī city (Troy, New Orleans, Baghdad, Greensburg, Port-au-Prince…) falls through conflict or nature’s twists and turns with the loss of home, heart, and in many cases, loved ones. In the Journey, during a suspension of momentum, disorientation occurs, a siren-like song removes the traveler from the relentless drive to escape or to arrive. In Aeneas’ last desperate hours in Troy, the ghost of his wife appears to him, urging him to continue, to live. In the Lament, the gospel song is a memory serving as hope. Moments in the present/current reality are juxtaposed with moments infused with dreams, imaginings and memory. In addition to musical ideas woven throughout these works, time displacement is a recurring element in each. There is a reiterated rhythm of loss, but also one of renewal and hope and continuation.
Inspired by Virgil’s Aeneid, Gates of Silence consists of 3 works which are connected but independent.