Appendix 1. Scholarly debates on the origin and meaning of Dido and Aeneas: an overview

1.1 In the late 1980s, after a libretto associated with a school performance of John Blow’s Venus and Adonis was found in the Cambridge University Library,1 several scholars questioned the assumption that Purcell’s opera originated at Josias Priest’s school, among them Michael Burden and Peter Holman.2 In the early 1990s, others tried to establish the date of a supposed earlier performance: Bruce Wood and Andrew Pinnock proposed a 1684 performance date, primarily using stylistic and other circumstantial evidence, while Andrew R. Walkling posited an initial performance during the reign of James II, on the basis of a political allegorical reading of the opera.3 More recently, the date of the school performance has also been called into question. For many years, scholars believed that it took place in 1689, the date of Thomas D’Urfey’s published epilogue to the opera;4 however, epistolary evidence found by Bryan White suggests a performance date no later than July 1688. Indeed, a letter found by White indicates the opera may have been “made” for Priest’s school, raising questions about whether it was ever performed at court at all.5

1.2 A variety of other interpretations of Dido have been articulated in recent years, among them Judith Peraino’s reading of the opera within the homosocial environment at Priest’s school, Wendy Heller’s analysis of Dido as stoic heroine, and my study of Purcell and Tate’s engagement with the musico-dramatic conventions associated with disorder.6

1 Richard Luckett, “A New Source for ‘Venus and Adonis,’ ” The Musical Times 130, no. 1752 (1989): 76–79. 2 Michael Burden, review of Ellen T. Harris, Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, in The Musical Times 130, no. 1752 (1989): 85–86; Peter Holman, review of Dido and Aeneas, full score, ed. Ellen T. Harris, and vocal score, ed. Edward J. Dent, rev. Harris, in Music & Letters 71, no. 4 (1990): 617–20. 3 Bruce Wood and Andrew Pinnock, “ ‘Unscarr’d by turning times’? The Dating of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas,” Early Music 20, no. 3 (1992): 372–90; Andrew R. Walkling, “The Dating of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas? A Reply to Bruce Wood and Andrew Pinnock,” Early Music 22, no. 3 (1994): 469–81; and Walkling, “Political Allegory in Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas,’ ” Music and Letters 76, no. 4 (1995): 540–71. 4 See for example Curtis Price, Henry Purcell and the London Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 225. 5 Bryan White, “Letter from Aleppo: Dating the Chelsea School Performance of Dido and Aeneas,” Early Music 37, no. 3 (2009): 417–28. 6 Judith Peraino, “I Am an Opera: Identifying with Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas,” in En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera, ed. Corinne E. Blackmer and Patricia Juliana Smith (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 99–131; Wendy Heller, “ ‘A Present for the Ladies’: Ovid, Montaigne, and the Redemption of Purcell's Dido,” Music and Letters 84, no. 2 (2003): 189–208; and Amanda Eubanks Winkler, O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note: Music for Witches, the Melancholic, and the Mad on the Seventeenth-Century English Stage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 54–61, 105–13, 139–42.