If Venus is labelled a mask, so should Dido be – arguably with even more justification, as the “antimask” element (the witches) is much more developed, and the Prologue (for which no music has survived) is much closer to the conventional panegyric of the genre. There may even have been “noble” participation, as the roles of the two masks are identical in vocal characteristics – Venus a dramatic soprano like Dido, Adonis a low tenor as is Aeneas, and Cupid a kind of soubrette, as is Belinda. So in its casting too, Dido and Aeneas may have been inspired by Venus and Adonis. Perhaps Dido was a sequel to Venus, organised also by Mary Davies.

Neither of them, for 17^th century England, are operas. For one thing, they are much too short – no doubt the reason that neither was ever heard by itself on the public stage (perhaps when they were done as school shows, the modesty of the circumstances permitted the use of the grand term “opera”). And they were through-composed. English opera of the time, as Dryden and others made clear, involved spoken dialogue, in the manner of The Magic Flute.

But Dido and Aeneas was at least heard in the public playhouse. In 1700, the Actor’s Theatre Company, which had split from the formerly United Company and were falling on hard times, were desperately looking for attractive music to counteract successful revivals in the other house of Purcell’s stage works, to the scores of which they no longer had access. Dido and Aeneas being far too short for an entire evening’s entertainment, the playwright Charles Gildon decided to include it as a series of interludes between the acts of his heavily rewritten version of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.

Comic or musical interludes in a serious play were hardly a new idea, and had been much in vogue in London recently. Pretexts were found to introduce the musical moments (usually the entertainment or repose of one the characters) but the success of the whole concept depended on choosing interludes which reinforced the plotline of the play and gave insight into the characters. In the case of Dido, the “entertainments” are all given for the villain Angelo, who seeks to deflower the virtuous Isabella. After the Hunting scene is interrupted by the storm, Angelo compares it to the opportunity he has to possess Isabella: “And when, my Dido, I’ve possessed thy charms, I then will throw thee from my glutted arms, And think no more on all thy soothing Harms.” Later, Dido’s death is followed by a scene in which Isabella refuses to yield, even in exchange for her brother’s life. It seems very clear that in 1700 Dido, like Isabella, was considered virtuous, and Aeneas, like Angelo, a scoundrel and a cad, a reading that has inspired our own take on the story.

Thus transmogrified, Measure for Measure was successful, and revived in later years. That Purcell’s music for Dido was a big factor in its success is borne out by its use as interludes in other plays in 1704 and more revivals in 1706. This is very probably the moment that it was shorn of the music that it now missing – the whole of the Prologue (which had been transformed into a final celebration in 1700 and was afterwards replaced by “Scotch dances”) and, perhaps by mistake, the chorus after Aeneas’s soliloquy at the end of Act 2.

The only musical sources for Dido and Aeneas date from the second half of the 18^th century, and seem to preserve its state in 1704, four removes from its creation at the court of Charles II. Given that, it is a miracle that we have as much as we do, although it is a shame to have lost the Prologue, which we have not tried to replace. Purcell’s mastery of setting English is so complete that his music is inextricably tied to its text, making it very difficult to adapt. We have however found music, largely from his early works, for the missing chorus (which I have transformed into a duet) and for several essential dances.

Dido and Aeneas has a way of being all things to all men. Our production tries something new in terms of characterisation, but insists on the old for the musical choices, and even the pronunciation. Enjoy !

G O’R

Read Chapter 4 : The When and Why of Dido and Aeneas

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In an epilogue written for this school performance the girls are described as “Protestants and English nuns … unscarr’d by turning times”. This directs our thoughts to 1689, just after “The Glorious Revolution” of 1688 had driven out the Catholic king James II and replaced him with his daughter Mary II and her very protestant husband William of Orange. For a long time it was assumed that this must have been Dido’s first performance, despite the incongruity of England’s best composer stirring himself to one of his finest achievements for a girls’ school, even it was run by a well-known figure in the London artistic scene (Priest being Dancing Master both to the Court and to the only Theatre Company then in existence).

The only other piece of English music of this period which much resembles Dido is John Blow’s “Masque for the Entertainment of the King” Venus and Adonis, given before Charles II probably in early 1683. They share themes (tragic love, hunting), structure (a prologue and three acts), much use of declamatory arioso, many dances, and a final tragic air and mourning chorus. Blow had been one of Purcell’s teachers at the Chapel Royal, and had remained a close friend and colleague: the two composers frequently referred to each other’s work, exchanging and emulating melodies, harmonies, textures, forms, subjects and musical breakthroughs. Although nowadays Purcell is by far the better known, the artistic relationship between the former master and his pupil seems to have been one of equals until at least 1690, when Purcell came to his full maturity. Recently, it has been noticed that after Venus and Adonis had been “Perform’d before the King”, it was given “afterwards at Mr Josiah Preist’s school in Chelsey”, in 1684. Could Dido and Aeneas have followed the same path – created for the Court, and revived for the school?

Arguing for this view is the fact that most of the artistic exchanges between Blow and Purcell happened almost immediately – so much so that it is sometimes difficult to know who had inspired the other. It seems unlikely that Purcell should hark back to a work by Blow written six years earlier, during which time both their styles had evolved. And it must be said that the music is hardly adapted to school performance either, with its complex declamatory recitative. Young singers tend to be more comfortable with simple melodies.

There is no document which can prove that Dido was performed at court. But in 1683, the king ordered the conversion of a room in the White Tower at Windsor Castle – where the court habitually spent the summer – into a theatre. All the records of court entertainments given there have been lost, which makes it virtually certain that if Dido was given before the king, it must have happened there. The latest possible date is therefore the summer of 1684, as Charles died the following February.  It is striking that Dido contains many echoes of other music Purcell was writing in the early 1680’s. Listeners can judge for themselves in the duo that I have added at the end of Act Two for a text (“Then since our Charmes”) for which no music has survived, adapted from two Court Odes of 1681 and 1682. Its resemblance to the air about the tragic end of Actaeon, heard five minutes earlier, is uncanny.

It is also possible that Dido was planned for summer 1685, but frustrated by Charles’ death. That would have resulted in it being definitively put to one side, as it would have been unthinkable to present to his successor, the very Catholic James II, a story in which the hero is duped by a false god represented by witches (who as we have seen in my last chapter were inextricably identified with Catholics in the public mind) into abandoning his Queen and country. On the other hand, after James had gone, it could be revived in the quasi-amateur setting of the school, perhaps to remind the London theatre management of Purcell’s capacity for dramatic music.

The success of the reminder can be seen in the succession of Purcell masterworks written for the theatre over the succeeding years – Dioclesian (1690), King Arthur (1691), and The Fairy Queen (1692) to name just the first three. In the nomenclature of the time, they were called “dramatick operas”, following the description of Dryden: “a poetical tale or Fiction, represented by Vocal and Instrumental Music, adorn’d with Scenes, Machines and Dancing” and with spoken dialogue. Dido and Aeneas cannot be called “an opera” by this definition because it is “through-composed” – the whole text is set to music.

So what is it? And why was it never given on the English stage, except as interludes in another play? And why are there bits missing? All the answers will be found in my next, and last, episode.

 G O’R

Read Chapter 3 : Heroes, Heroines and Witches

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Virgil, however, was not the only source for Dido’s story in 16^th and 17^th century England. Both Petrarch and Boccaccio, as well as many writers of the early Church, had concentrated on other aspects of her story, which tended to show her chaste and virtuous. Aeneas does not figure in their versions. Instead Dido is importuned by King Iarbas, from whom she bought the land for Carthage in a dodgy real-estate deal, and who looks on the expanding city with anxiety and envy. Dido commits suicide rather than yield to him, in memory of the vow of chastity made to her murdered husband Sychaeus. She follows the model of virtuous Lucretia rather than sinful Phaedra.

In the last 40 years of 16^th century England, Dido was often compared to Queen Elizabeth I. The first thing she shared was their name, Eliza, a modification of Elissa. Then there was the fact that she was a female ruler, a novel concept for the time. In regard to a possible marriage, the nobles of Elizabethan England were torn by fears that the Queen would never marry, and thus leave no heir, and fears that she would – to a subject? a (gasp) Catholic foreigner? Was she Petrarchan Dido, who resisted temptation for the good of the state, or Virgilian Dido, who gave in to her desires, and thus weakened it? Both solutions were in some way unsatisfactory, implicit if the monarch was female. The situation was further complicated by Elizabeth’s supposed family connection with Aeneas, based on the legend that Britain had been founded by Aeneas’s grandson Brutus (of which more below).

In any case, in both art and literature referring to Elizabeth, there are explicit references to Dido, sometimes as a model, sometimes as a warning. Proof that Dido could be all things to all men is provided by the play Dido, Queen of Carthage, by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nashe, which probably dates from around 1590. In this version, Dido is a tease and Aeneas is a pliant boy who embarrassedly follows the ardent Dido’s erotic lead, and then sheepishly abandons her when so ordered by Mercury. When we realise that this play was given at Court before the Queen, and moreover performed entirely by boys, we start to realise the layers of meaning to which such a text could be subject.

By Purcell’s day, classical texts were not always taken seriously. Parallel to the study of all the versions listed above were the “travesties”, in which the stories, while closely followed, were vulgarised into doggerel verse, with much ribald “schoolboy” – quasi-pornographic – humour. They were hugely popular, and one of the most often reprinted was Charles Cotton’s take on Dido’s story, first published in 1665, then reprinted in 1667, 1670, 1672, 1678, 1682 …. (He called them his Scarronides, after Paul Scarron’s roguishly winking Virgile travesti from around 1650). Cotton does not mince his words: Virgil is a liar, for the events could never have happened, Aeneas a faithless coward and Dido guiltless. Cotton also introduces witchcraft into the story as Dido, like Armida, seeks to find spells to prevent Aeneas’s departure.

Which brings us to Purcell’s librettist for Dido and Aeneas, Nahum Tate.  The text set by Purcell was not Tate’s first version, as in 1678 he published a play called Brutus of Alba; or, The Enchanted Lovers. In it the story of Dido and Aeneas is transferred to Syracuse, with Dido as its Queen and Aeneas transmogrified into his grandson Brutus, whose mission is to found the Kingdom of Britain – a piece of English historical invention dating from around the 12^th century. The play is notable for the extensive role given to the witches, following the fashion of the times. And Tate makes a considerable effort to share the blame for the ultimate tragedy between the two protagonists. The English Restoration period loved nothing better than a debate between Love and Honour.

Of which, more in my next.

G O’R

Read Chapter 3 : Heros, Heroines and Witches

Read Chapter 1 : Who was Dido ?

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The Ensemble William Byrd will perform its own version of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas next April, in a concert version with gesture.

Interpreting Dido is always more complicated than it appears. The only useful score dates from some 60 years after its composition, which was no doubt for the royal court of Charles II. It was subsequently adapted more than once, firstly – and famously –  for a girls’ school, and then transformed into interludes to be heard between the acts of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Of the original libretto and score, nothing remains, and it is certain that some sections have disappeared.

Our new production takes into account the most recent research, and emphasizes the importance of the witches: their rôle as the deus ex machina of the plot reflects the obsession of 17th century England in general, and of the royal court in particular, with their actions and influence. We have also completed certain parts of the score for which the words survive without music, and added some dances where appropriate, all with Purcell’ own music.

Our performances will be given by:

Brigitte Vinson (Dido)
Ryland Angel (Aeneas/ Sorceress)
Amelia Berridge (Belinda)

With the instrumentalists of the Ensemble William Byrd
and the Ensemble Vocal de Pontoise

Direction : Graham O’Reilly

Sunday , 6th April 2014 at 18h
in The Dôme, Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, 95500, Pontoise

Saturday 12 avril 2014 at 20h30
in the Temple du Foyer de l’Âme, 7 rue du Pasteur Wagner, 75011, Paris

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Nicer to look at. Easier to read and more elegant, your visit will be accompanied by our own “blue byrd”, keeping an eye on you from the edge of each page.

Easier to use. Our new site is full of useful and carefully organised information about our programmes, our past successes, and our educational initiatives.

More to find. Our new discography page is full of musical extracts to listen to. In fact, there are no less than 81 musical extracts on the site! That’s because we’re proud of them. And you can also listen to extracts from concerts and see us at work in videos in the Media section.

More direct. You can easily keep up with all our news in the News section, and follow us on our Facebook page.

Coming rendezvous :

- 2 concerts of Dido and Aeneas in April 2014 in Pontoise and Paris
- “Les Voix de Cristal” in Avallon (89) on June 15th 2014

If you have comments, suggestions, or feedback, don’t hesitate to get in touch through our contact page.

The Team

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