Dido and Aeneas

Dido and Aeneas was the first opera written in English by Henry Purcell in 1689. This was a commission from the Josias Priest Girls School in London. The libretto was by Nahum Tate, an Irish-Anglo poet. Tate (née Teate) based the libretto on Virgil's (70Bc - 19BC) epic 10,000 line poem, The Aeneid, which recounts Aeneas' wanderings from Troy to Italy. From the title we know that there are two main characters: Dido, Queen of Carthage, and Aeneas, surivivor of the Trojan war and alleged founder of Rome.

Aneias is the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. He was also nephew to King Priam of Troy and cousin to Hector, one of the greatest warriors of the Iliad. He is primarily known for bringing Trojan culture to Rome as a rebirth of Troy. Troy was a city-state located on the western edge of what is now Turkey that was a center of power in antiquity. It lies east of Athens across the Aegean Sea. Troy fell to Greece in the 12th century BC. The Aeneids - Aeneas' entourage - founded Lavinium (a small settlement 6 km south of the site of Rome) in the 12th century BC. Much later Romulus continues the story by founding Rome. Julius Caesar commissioned Virgil to write the Aeneid to create the origin myth of Roman culture.

Dido is the queen of Carthage. She is the daughter of Malgernus, King of Tyre. (Tyre is a port city 80 km - 50 miles - south of Beirut. It was a prosperous city due to it's two ports, a northern port called the Sidonian port, and a southern port called the Egyptian port. The city and outlying lands also benfited from an abundance of fresh water from springs. Dido was married to Acerbus, a wealthy merchant and her maternal uncle. Dido fled Tyre in haste after her brother Pygmalion (no relation to Ovid's Metamorphoses character who insired George Bernard Shaw's play). She loaded Acerbus's hidden wealth on ships and fled to Cyprus with her many followers. From there, with even more followers they set off for Northern Africa, settling in what is now Tunisia and founded the city of Carthage. Pygmalion, on advice from the Gods, let her go.

But her troubles were not over. Upon disembarkment, Dido bought land from prior Tyre expats in nearby Utica to found Carthage. Carthage propered and she was beloved by her followers, now not only for her beauty but also for her business and leadership acumen. Both did not go unnoticed by the moor King Iarbas. He had a powerful kingdom in Lybia, east of Carthage. He proposed to help grow Carthage into a powerful city on the price her Dido becoming his wife. Dido was torn between her ongoing grieving for Acerbus and her duty to her people to help Carthage prosper. She requested several months to allow her grieving to come to an end. King Iarbas consented. Toward the end of that time, Dido erected a funeral pyre with which to burn in sacred fire, Acerbus's belongings. After sacrificing many sheep and oxen, she mounted the pyre herself with sword in hand, drove the blade into her heart and fell into the pyre.

Purcell's story focuses on the tragic love of Dido for Aeneas.