Dido and Aeneas

Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is an operatic miniature which transcends its modest dimensions, emerging as one of the greatest of all musical tragedies. Lasting less than an hour, the libretto (derived from Virgil’s Aeneid) offers a highly compressed account of the doomed love between Dido, Queen of Carthage and the Trojan prince, Aeneas (possibly a coded warning to the Catholic James II [Aeneas] not to abandon Dido [a personification of England] for Rome). Unlike Purcell’s other stage works—which have spoken dialogue—Dido is alone in being fully sung throughout. Modelled on Blow’s Venus and Adonis, given at court around 1682, Dido may also have originated in royal circles, though its first known performance was at a girls’ boarding school in Chelsea in 1689. Although lost in its original form, what remains of Purcell’s score is of the highest quality, drawing on Italian and French models, but distinctive in its preference for short movements, sectional construction and an overall tunefulness, which infuses the declamatory writing and links together solos and choruses through the power of dance. Repeated ground basses play an important part in structuring the work, beginning with Dido’s anxious “Ah! Belinda” and culminating in her “When I am Laid in Earth”—one of the most moving of all operatic laments.