Dido & Aeneas

Carthage, in mythical times. The hero Aeneas, who fled from burning Troy and traveled across the Mediterranean to North Africa with his ships, meets the beautiful Queen Dido. Love fills them — and yet they don't come together because fate calls. Aeneas moves on to Italy to found a new empire, while the abandoned Dido has no way out.

Only one “real” opera was composed by Henry Purcell in 1689, a work of particular melodic ingenuity. The story of the hero and the Carthaginian ruler told so impressively in Virgil's epic Aeneid was echoed in music that was no less hauntingly designed. Human passions are revealed undisguised, the joys and excitements as well as the hardships and sorrows, up to the deepest despair over the relentlessness of the divine will. Dido's famous lawsuit, with which she concludes her life and the opera, demonstrates Purcell's extraordinary expressive power to open up an entire world with just a few notes. But his ability to write dance movements and chorus of great melody and rhythmic conciseness also makes the “Orpheus Britannicus”, highly regarded by his contemporaries and admired by posterity, appear to be a truly exceptional composer. Singing, playing and dancing combine to create a special form of theatre.