Ensemble OrQuesta returns to Grimeborn with a revival of one of their most beloved productions, Dido and Aeneas.

One of the oldest and most enduring in the English repertoire, Purcell’s operatic masterpiece gets a strikingly intimate, minimalist treatment in Arcola’s downstairs studio. 

Five performers bring to life a story of love, betrayal and abandonment that has moved audiences for over three centuries. Based on Virgil’s Aeneid, the opera follows the story of Dido, Queen of Carthage, who falls for the Trojan hero Aeneas, knowing he is destined to leave her. 

Helen May and Rosemary Carlton-Willis alternate the roles of Dido and the Sorceress – and the audience will choose who sings which role, decided on the spot before the performance begins

Dido & Aeneas

Henry Purcell (1659–1695)

Dido and Aeneas is one of the great masterpieces of English Baroque music and Purcell’s only true opera. Written to a libretto by Nahum Tate, it draws its story from Virgil’s Aeneid, recounting the tragic love between Dido, Queen of Carthage, and the Trojan hero Aeneas.

The precise circumstances surrounding the opera’s composition remain uncertain. It is traditionally associated with a performance at Josias Priest’s school for young women in Chelsea in 1689, although it may have been composed and performed earlier. Despite its modest scale and relatively short duration, Purcell created a work of remarkable dramatic intensity, moving effortlessly between intimate expressions of love and grief, supernatural menace, dance and chorus.

The story finds Dido reluctant to admit her love for Aeneas, despite the encouragement of her confidante Belinda. Their happiness is short-lived. A Sorceress and her followers plot Dido’s destruction, sending a spirit disguised as Mercury to convince Aeneas that the gods command him to leave Carthage and continue his journey to Italy. Aeneas prepares to depart. Although he ultimately offers to defy the gods and remain, Dido rejects him: the very fact that he was prepared to abandon her has already sealed their fate.

The opera culminates in one of Purcell’s most celebrated creations, Dido’s lament, “When I am laid in earth.” Built over a repeatedly descending bass line, the music transforms an extraordinarily simple musical idea into an expression of profound grief. Dido’s final request — that she should be remembered, but that her fate should be forgotten — is followed by the chorus “With drooping wings,” bringing this brief tragedy to a conclusion of extraordinary stillness and beauty.