"Julianne Baird's voice is just right for Dido and she sings movingly, with fine support from the chorus. Her supporting cast is excellent. Timothy Bentch is an appealingly warm Aeneas. Andrea Lauren Brown a fresh-voiced, pert Belinda. Tatyana Rashkovsky a vivid Witch (though with a wide vibrato) and Dennis Kalup a personably nautical Sailor. The Ama Deus Baroque Ensemble is here a string quintet plus continuo, so the whole performance is in scale, and they accompany very stylishly. This is not a first choice, but it is a considerable one and the bonus is a generous suite from A Midsummer Night's Dream (9 movements) plus the famous Chaconne, taken briskly to make a suitable close after the Hornpipe and Dance of the Fairies. Good, well balanced recording."

- The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2009


"Lyrichord Early Music Series' release of Dido and Aeneas is a powerful reminder of the greatness of Purcell's only opera. The early music group Ama Deus Ensemble conducted by Valentin Radu turns in a performance of wrenching simplicity and musical and dramatic directness. Julianne Baird sings with pearly luminosity as the doomed queen Dido, whose grief so overwhelms her that she can hardly whisper her despair… Andrea Lauren Brown as Belinda is fresh-voiced and pure, and Timothy Bentch's Aeneas is open and heroic.... The minor characters and the chorus perform with limberness and idiomatic sensitivity, as does the orchestra of strings and continuo… The excellent sound is spacious and clean."
- Stephen Eddins, All Music Guide



“Although a new recording of Purcell's eternally moving "Dido & Aeneas" may not be the first recording for the great American soprano Julianne Baird, nor the first time she has recorded the opera, it is one of her finest. Surrounded by a fine original-instrument band and a fresh-voiced, enthusiastic cast, she and conductor Valantin Radu produce a performance that should be the envy of many more polished attempts. Her final lament is wonderfully moving, and a tribute both to the composer and Ms. Baird.

The Ama Deus Ensemble, founded by Radu in 1991 on the occasion of the Mozart Bicentennial, combines with the Vox Renaissance Consort to make up Vox Ama Deus, a Philadelphia-based musical organization which since 1987 has specialized in authentic performances of vocal and instrumental music of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries... they play with both style and, most important, heart."

Lawrence Vittes
Southern California Early Music News
October, 2007

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