Purcell's Dido

Lucie Skeaping presents a profile of one of the earliest and best-known English operas - Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas", the love story of the Queen of Carthage and her Trojan hero. Set to a libretto by Nahum Tate, Dido and Aeneas was first performed in Chelsea in July 1688, and although it wasn't staged again in the composer's lifetime, it received a brief revival in 1700 and then disappeared completely as a staged work, with only sporadic concert performances until 1895 when the first staged version in modern times was performed by students of the Royal College of Music at London's Lyceum Theatre to mark the bicentenary of Purcell's death. It has since become one of the most frequently staged operas all over the world.