Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

In Dido’s final lament, a descending bass keeps returning while the singer moves above it. The repeated ground can feel secure and inescapable at once. In this recording by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, try following that lower line rather than waiting only for the famous vocal melody. The relationship between them is the drama.

Purcell’s English opera compresses the relationship between Queen Dido and the Trojan hero Aeneas into a compact sequence of scenes. It is a late-seventeenth-century work whose earliest performance history remains a subject of research. The linked edition is the Erato recording issued with a 1995 copyright, featuring Véronique Gens as Dido. It must be distinguished from Christie’s earlier Harmonia Mundi performance with Guillemette Laurens, subsequently reissued and remastered.

One person, then a room

Follow the change from a solo utterance to a choral response. The solo can bring us close to an individual; the chorus places that individual among other people. Neither function is merely decorative. The speed of an answer or the arrival of a dance can change how the preceding phrase feels. You need not learn every character in advance: knowing whether one voice or several are speaking provides a workable first map.

Do not hurry through the dances

The witches’ scenes and the sailors’ dance are not simply obstacles before the famous ending. A regular dancing pulse can make the hesitation that follows feel sharper. Listen across track boundaries, since the twenty-six divisions sometimes join dialogue and chorus in one item. This is a dramatic sequence rather than twenty-six unrelated songs. Contrasting kinds of movement help a relatively brief recording contain more than one emotional pace.

A judgement with qualifications

Stereo Review’s 1995 comparison admired Gens’s vocal lustre while finding stronger characterisation in another recording. That contemporary judgement should not become an unsupported claim that this edition wins every comparison. Later reissues of Christie’s earlier performance also make the conductor’s name alone an unreliable identifier. For your own comparison, hear how this Dido stands against the chorus, then return from the final lament to “Ah Belinda”. The opening anxiety may sound different once you have heard where it leads.