Dido and Aeneas: About the Program

April 27, 2024

SYNOPSIS

Setting: Ancient Carthage

Dido, Queen of Carthage …………………………………………….. soprano
Belinda, her confidante ………………………………………………. soprano
Aeneas, a Trojan prince ………………………………………………. baritone
Sorceress ……………………………………………………………………….. baritone/mezzo-soprano
Spirit (in the form of Mercury) …………………………………… alto
Sailor ………………………………………………………………………………. soprano

Choruses of courtiers, witches, sailors and cupids

1st Witch 
2nd Woman
1st Woman 
2nd Witch

Although the music to the PROLOGUE is missing, a printed libretto recounts the conversation between the Greek god Phoebus (driving the chariot of the sun across the ocean), the goddess Venus, and the Nereids, or sea nymphs. It ends in a chorus and dance in honor of Phoebus and Venus who have journeyed across the sea, which many musicologists (but not all) see as allusions to William and Mary, who came to the English monarchy in 1689.

ACT I opens at the palace of Dido, the widowed Queen of Carthage. The court tries to cheer the Queen, who expresses her sorrow in the aria “Ah! Belinda, I am press’d with torment” over a slow repeating bass pattern—a form that will return in the final aria of the work. Belinda, her confidante, surmises the Queen’s grief stems from her feelings for the Trojan hero, Aeneas, who has taken refuge with his countrymen in Carthage under Dido’s protection. The arrival of Aeneas and the Trojans confirms the pair’s affection towards each other, and the courts celebrate in song and dance, but the revelry is ended by ominous thunder.

ACT II begins in the cave of a group of sorceresses (or witches) who express their hatred for Dido (but never explain the reason for it). They plot to trick Aeneas into leaving immediately for Italy to injure Dido (although they acknowledge that it is his destiny to do so). They then conjure a storm with a dramatic echoing chorus and dance. In the second scene, Dido and Aeneas are entertained by song and dance after a hunt, with the tacet assumption that they have consummated their relationship confessed in the first act and are now enjoying the peace and relaxation of a contented couple. The coming disaster is foreshadowed in an aria by a lady of the court who recounts the story of Actaeon, who was killed in a hunt by his own hounds, set above a repeating bass of running eighth notes. Aeneas enters with a prize from his hunting and immediately a storm breaks up the party (as conjured by the witches). Aeneas, however, is cut off by an agent of the witches in the guise of Mercury, the messenger of the gods, who orders him to leave Carthage immediately to found Rome. He obeys without question, but expresses the difficulty of parting from Dido in dramatic recitative—his most expansive musical number in the opera. The libretto for the end of Act II includes references to a chorus and dance of the witches who exult in their triumph, but the music does not survive.

ACT III opens at the harbor where the Greek sailors are preparing to leave without delay, so there will be no time for a “boozy short leave” with the ladies ashore. The sorceresses exult in their success and plan for further destruction. Dido enters in a state of despair with Belinda. Aeneas enters and seeks to find a way to defy the Gods and stay, but Dido orders him away, and she falls into a terminal despair. She sings her concluding aria over a repeating bass line that represents her constant, crushing despair. The concluding chorus calls upon Cupid to bear witness to Dido’s fate.

COMMENTARY

Rome had a perfectly fine (if convoluted) foundation myth which involves the twin brothers Romulus and Remus, a she-wolf who fed them as infants, and (unfortunately) the murder of Remus by his brother. After the fall of the Republic and a chaotic era of civil wars, the first Emperor, Augustus, sought ways to solidify the narrative of Rome’s greatness when he ascended in 27 B.C.E. The poet Virgil wrote the Aeneid to praise Augustus and establish a new mythology—that Rome was founded by a noble remnant of Trojan heroes, displaced from their home by the treachery of the Greeks. For a nation getting past its own period of Civil Wars while becoming the new Rome in the 17th century with colonies across the seas, English translations of the Aeneid were immensely popular, especially among supporters of the monarchy.

Nahum Tate (1652-1715) adapted the Dido and Aeneas story from Book IV of the Aeneid the first timefor his play Brutus of Alba (1678)in which he changed the names and locations of the basic story. He subsequently adapted several plays of Shakespeare (including King Lear) to make them more suited for the stage of his time—an editorial project that only invites poor comparisons to the original. But such editorial practice gave him experience when he revised Brutus of Alba into the libretto set by Henry Purcell (c. 1659-1695). Tate’s compression of the story into an opera performable in 90 minutes, however, weakens the understandability of the story. Where Aeneas originally is a noble prince who leaves Dido only to fulfill the demands of the gods (which no mortal can refuse), Tate’s Aeneas is a bit of a dim bulb who is easily tricked into leaving a woman who truly loves him, then tries to go back on that decision, before finally being kicked out by Dido. Likewise, the Greek sailors are hardly portrayed as the heroes who will establish Rome. In short, Tate’s text hardly gives an artistic support for a positive analogy of ancient Rome and contemporary England. 

Based on evidence from an undated libretto, we know the work was performed at a girls boarding school in Chelsea, but like Tate’s libretto, only confusion has resulted from this brief evidence. The earliest score, known as the Tenbury Manuscript, dates from no earlier than 1750 and omits the music for the Prologue and conclusion of Act II. What we have of Purcell’s opera is “a mutilated fragment,” as Curtis Price puts it. And while we know it was performed at the girls boarding school, it may not mean it was written and premiered there.

Given the time and expense of producing an opera, the idea that the work was written for a girls boarding school has struck some scholars (again, Curtis Price) as unlikely. There is evidence that the school put on some operas after being performed at court, as was the case with John Blow’s Venus and Adonis (1684). The addition of the witches (absent from Virgil) has been at the center of this debate. Specifically, witches were often an allusion to the Roman Catholic church in the London theatre of the day, and work may have intended to warn the court to avoid Catholic (magical) interference in English affairs. But which court? Following the Restoration of monarchy after the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, the suggested dates and rulers include:

1684 for Charles II 
1687 for  James II (a Catholic)
1689 for William and Mary (based on a reading of the Prologue)

Or perhaps a new Prologue was added to an older work to honor William and Mary in 1689, keeping Charles and James in the running...

On the other hand, the editing and compression of the story strike other scholars, such as Ellen Harris, as exactly the sort of changes you want at a girls boarding school—men are pigs, witches are witchy (so to speak), and a young woman would do well to mind her business, avoid romances, and stay away from the mean girls. And if you were going to perform the work at court, would you really want to give political advice to the monarch in your opera? 
If the origins of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas are confusing, its subsequent history is no more transparent. There is no documentary evidence for any other performance of the work in Purcell’s life time; the closing aria, “Thy had, Belinda” was reprinted in the collection of Purcell’s songs, Orpheus Britannicus, in 1689, soon after his death. The work was produced on the London stage in 1700, but inserted in to a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. 

Like the Venus de Milo, another “mutilated fragment,” the torso that remains of Dido and Aeneas is amazingly beautiful—it contains some of the most glorious opera music ever written in English. The listener is struck by how all the parts of an opera—solo singing, orchestral playing, chorus, and dance—fit together to create a unity Richard Wagner would have been impressed by. The echo chorus in Act II depicts the power of the witches in conjuring their spell, and the recitative of the couple breaking up in Act III may be a bit too realistic for comfort. Above all, Purcell is able to depict the depth of emotion in the arias, placing his work on the same expressive level as the operas of Mozart and Verdi.