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Dido and Aeneas: a funeral for the Queen of Carthage concert staging Tuesday 2 October 2018 7.30pm, Hall Purcell Sonata No 1 in G minor (movements 1, 2 & 3) Orpheus Britannicus – ‘So when the glittering Queen of Night’ Chacony in G minor, Z730 Pavan in G minor The Tempest – ‘No stars again shall hurt you from above’ Close thine eyes and sleep secure Chacony in G minor, Z807 interval 20 minutes Marco Borggreve Marco Purcell Dido and Aeneas Academy of Ancient Music Choir of AAM Richard Egarr director/harpsichord Thomas Guthrie director Caitlin Hulcup Dido Ashley Riches Aeneas Rowan Pierce Belinda Neal Davies Sorceress Laura Caldow & Ben Thompson Puppeteers Michael Casey Lighting Ruth Paton Designer Part of Barbican Presents 2018–19 Part of Academy of Ancient Music 2018–19 Generously supported by the Geoffrey C Hughes Charitable Trust as part of the AAM Purcell Opera Cycle, and the Roger and Ingrid Pilkington Trust We are grateful to Caitlin Hulcup for stepping in at short notice to sing the role of Dido Please turn off watch alarms, phones, pagers etc during the performance. Taking photographs, capturing images or using recording devices during a performance is strictly prohibited. The City of London Corporation If anything limits your enjoyment please let us know is the founder and during your visit. Additional feedback can be given principal funder of the Barbican Centre online, as well as via feedback forms or the pods located around the foyers. Welcome Tonight marks the third and final instalment intense, culminating in Dido’s great in our series of semi-stagings of Purcell lament. This is no mere one-dimensional works, co-produced by the Barbican and tragedy, however – it offers ceremony and Academy of Ancient Music. Following a moments of humour too, qualities that praised and thought-provoking realisation director Thomas Guthrie is keen to exploit of King Arthur last year, AAM Music to balance out the work’s darker sides. Director Richard Egarr now turns his Tonight’s star-crossed lovers are Caitlin attention to Purcell’s best-known stage Hulcup and Ashley Riches; joining them are work: Dido & Aeneas. Rowan Pierce as Belinda and Neal Davies as the Sorceress. It’s a work swathed in mystery as we don’t know for whom it was written or It promises to be a wonderful evening of even exactly when it was composed. Such music and drama. We hope you enjoy it. questions pale into insignificance when confronted with the genius of the music Huw Humphreys, Head of Music, Barbican itself. This is Purcell at his most searingly Alexander Van Ingen, Chief Executive, Academy of Ancient Music Director Thomas Guthrie writes: deeply ominous story of Actaeon’s death at a celebratory royal gathering? Who What to pair with Dido? A perennial put her up to it? And why does Purcell promoter’s problem. In this case, the invest it with such feeling? What were the idea for a funeral which could precede pressures on a female monarch, especially the opera was Richard Egarr’s, and I one so clearly related in the 17th-century was immediately excited not only by the mind to Elizabeth I (‘Elissa dies tonight’)? opportunity to dig out more of Purcell’s utterly extraordinary music, but also by the And puppets. Puppets and masks. dramatic potential of seeing characters’ Transitional objects, magical engagers of behaviour after the Queen’s death – our imaginations, great at dying, great and how that behaviour might provide at opening our ears as well as our minds, insight into the retelling of her last days. great at helping focus attention on the story. I hope you will salute the bravery and As for the opera itself, as so often with hard work of our modern singers, as I do. great drama – perhaps especially with For me it is vital that the originator of the great music drama – it’s what’s not said thought, who turns that thought into speech, that can be most revealing. Why does the song and movement, should be the chief Second Woman relate the violent and puppeteer. But it takes special artists to do it. 2 Dido & Aeneas: synopsis Welcome The Queen of Carthage is causing concern of Dido (‘Wayward sisters’), who was known in to her advisors. There are urgent matters of ancient times (conveniently enough) as ‘Elissa’. state to attend to, and she has not been seen in public for too long. There are particular Back in the countryside, the courtly entertainment concerns that the proposed marriage to is in full swing (‘Thanks to these lonesome vales’). Aeneas, recommended by them, and which The Second Woman is instructed to sing for the would seem to be so advantageous politically pleasure of the gathered royalty, but – and it is (both at home and in terms of foreign policy), not clear how this has come about – the chosen has unsettled her. Belinda, her lady-in-waiting song causes offence (‘Oft she visits’). The song and one of the only people who has access to tells the story of Actaeon, the mythological her private apartments, is sent once more to Theban hero, who was a famed hunter. After try to get a response from Dido. Just as she is he saw Artemis (Diana) bathing naked in the about to do so, the Queen appears (‘Shake the woods, his fate was sealed: the hunter became cloud from off your brow’/‘Banish sorrow’). the hunted; and he was ripped limb from limb by his own hounds. Dido is deeply disturbed, Aeneas In reply to such thinly disguised pressure from tries to distract her with his own inappropriate her court, Dido addresses only Belinda (‘Ah boast (‘Behold, upon my bending spear’), and Belinda’). She is troubled, and confused, but the witches’ storm approaches (‘The skies are doesn’t deny that her mind is on the marriage clouded’). The royal parties clear the picnic and (‘Whence could so much virtue spring?’). rush for shelter (‘Haste, haste to town’), but the Belinda, the other ladies-in-waiting and the witches’ envoy, in the promised form of Mercury, whole court together seize the opportunity to delays Aeneas to give him the false message urge her to action (‘Fear no danger to ensue’). that he must leave at once (‘Stay, Prince, and hear’). Aeneas, aware of the chaos and damage Aeneas, who has been impatiently waiting for such a desertion will cause, nonetheless agrees an answer to the proposal himself, now bursts to go (‘Jove’s commands shall be obeyed’). in (‘When royal fair’). Startled by such brazen public courting, Dido at first refuses him, but After a brief comic interlude, where sailors Aeneas is undaunted, and reminds her openly echo Aeneas’ abandonment of his beloved, of the political advantage of any union between as well as his excuses for leaving (‘Come them (‘If not for mine, for empire’s sake’). Belinda away, fellow sailors’), the witches celebrate and the court are relieved (‘Pursue thy conquest, their triumph (‘See the flags and streamers’) Love’) as Dido finally consents. A state outing to and vow to add insult to injury by turning their the countryside is planned, where the two courts storm on the departing ships of Aeneas. will celebrate the betrothal of Dido and Aeneas in a ceremonial hunt (‘To the hills and the vales’). Dido is tortured not just by her personal humiliation, but also by her perceived betrayal The scene now changes to show a coven of of Carthage (‘Your counsel all’). Aeneas arrives witches. Witches – powerful figures causing to apologise in person, but, despite his offering genuine fear throughout Europe and beyond in to ignore Jove’s instructions and stay after all, Purcell’s time – had traditionally been either male the damage is done, and Dido will not hear or female. But in the 17th century, due largely him. The courtiers feel this is a mistake (‘Great to the propaganda spread by James I, there minds against themselves conspire’) but they had been a shift towards the idea that witches only show their ignorance of the loneliness, could only be women. It was in James’s interest, the weight, and the strength of will that it has following as he did straight after the reign of taken to be a female monarch. Dido takes Elizabeth I, to undermine women in power. her own life, leaving Belinda distraught. Accordingly, the sorceress, originally (as here) sung by a man, takes a lead in stirring up hatred Synopsis © Thomas Guthrie 3 Henry Purcell (1659–95) A funeral for the Queen of Carthage For song texts, see page 7 of four, as the bass was usually doubled by the harpsichord). These works travelled through a England’s first composer of true historical and cycle of keys and were intended to introduce the international significance was born in the right Italian style to England. Each sonata is conceived place at the right time. Shortly after Henry Purcell as a single, continuous movement of shifting reached his first birthday, the monarchy was speed and gait. From the first, the Sonata in restored in England and music once more started G minor, we can already hear Purcell’s willingness to be heard in public institutions after years of to use harmony as a means of expression (a confinement to private homes. Baroque idea), rather than a by-product of the music’s linear weave (a Renaissance mainstay). One such institution was the church. Purcell’s father was Master of the Choristers at There is a certain terseness to the sonatas that Westminster Abbey and made sure his son was betrays the influence of Purcell’s friend and fully involved in the musical life of the Whitehall sometime mentor Matthew Locke.

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