Color: Colour

Credits:

Handl / Black Pencil

Description:

Aeneas, a prince of Troy, loses his fellow citizens and family members in the Trojan War, which engulfs the Greek states and the cities of Asia Minor in war. The son of Wenus and Anchises, and a brave warrior, he left Asia Minor to build a new Troy (later the great city of Rome) on the Mediterranean coast, only to be struck by a great storm off the coast of Africa. He is rescued in distress by Dido, Queen of Carthage, who has just lost her husband. Aeneas is welcomed with open arms, falls in love with Dido, and they decide to marry... Aeneas, prince of Troy, is the hero of the epic poem "Aeneas" by Vergilius, written in the 1st century BC. Metastasio's play "The Abandoned Didone" is based on the episode of Dido, the tragic queen of Carthage, who appears in the epic adventure story, and is known to have given birth to more than 70 operas in the 18th century. Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas," based on Vergilius' "Aeneas," was written from a libretto by Neiham Tate, and although the score was lost after the composer's death, most of it has been recovered from surviving sources. In this production by Deborah Warner, the prologue, which could not be restored, is reconstructed in three poems (read by actress Fiona Shaw), including T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land.The opera is an excellent introduction to the tragedy, and takes its cue from the well-documented performance of the opera at Chelsea Girls' Boarding School, setting the story in a classroom full of schoolgirls. In addition to the expressive singing of the two title roles of Hernman and Moltmann, the opera is sung with great presence by Summers as the Fairy and Moillon as the Genie, with William Christie's Les Arts Florissants giving this Purcell masterpiece new life. Naxos Japan