Early Opera Company

Heroic prince meets proud queen, the Gods interfere and tragedy ensues – that is the basic premise of Virgil’s version of Dido and Aeneas. In Nahum Tate's libretto, which Purcell set to music in the 1680s, things are somewhat different. In that Dido and Aeneas, a sinister Sorceress lends the fates a helping hand. Spirits easily deceive the Trojan prince Aeneas into abandoning Carthaginian queen Dido and going to Italy, where his descendants found Rome, and Queen Dido herself seems afraid of embracing happiness. All of this tragedy and tension inspired Purcell to compose music so superlative that shortly after his death it became emblematic of British culture. The lament When I am Laid in Earth has even become a modern cult classic.
The Early Opera Company and an array of top soloists combine Purcell's masterpiece with Charpentier's one-act opera Actéon. This tragic pastoral tells the same story as that recounted in the Dido and Aeneas aria ‘Oft she visits this lone mountain’. It is based on an episode from Ovid's Metamorphoses.