Dido and Aeneas

Collegium Vocale 1704

National Theatre Orchestra

National Theatre Opera Ballet

A gem of Baroque music, one of the oldest still widely performed and popular operas, the first world-class English opera ... These are among the attributes of Henry Purcell’s best-known work, whose genesis is not yet clear, a work that has not survived in its entirety. The opera was probably first performed in 1689 at the dance master and choreographer Josias Priest’s boarding school for young gentlewomen in Chelsea, London. Some scholars have, however, argued that Purcell wrote the piece for the English court, either for James II or, even earlier, for Charles II. Still others claim that the opera bears within a covert allegory, veiled in a mythological story, with the witches symbolising the Catholic Church, highly unpopular in the England of the time ...

Whatever the actual truth, great works possess the quality that they can be interpreted in multiple manners, as is the case of the opera Dido and Aeneas, based on Book 4 of Vergil’s epic poem The Aeneid, depicting the ill-fated love of Queen Dido, the legendary founder of Carthage, and Aeneas, a mythical Trojan hero, who, deceived by evil powers, abandons her. Purcell and his librettist, the poet Nahum Tate, did not aim to give a detailed account of the myth in the form of magnificent Baroque spectacle. Their opera is surprisingly intimate, spiritual and extremely melancholic. We could perhaps even say that the whole story only unfurls in the head of the title heroine, convinced that happiness and peace cannot be attained in life ...