Best of Händel / Purcell: Dido & Aeneas

Henry Purcell’s epic masterpiece, Dido and Aeneas has to do with the Trojan War. But what is even more important than the historical background of this hour-long little gem is love – as Dóra Barta, the director of the production highlights it, “Humanity has long known that if there is something you can die of, Love is certainly such a thing. Whether it is happy or not, returned or unrequited, one thing is sure: it is dead serious business. The tragic-ending romantic affair enfolding between the queen of Carthage and the Trojan hero was made into a grand classic of universal cultural history by Virgil, but it was the thirty-year-old Henry Purcell whose music made its heroes rise to the stars, among which they have been shining with never fading light for three and a half centuries now.”

The compositions of Georg Friedrich Händel, who spent most of his life in England and whose works, aside from Messiah, are rarely performed at the Opera House, create an authentic Baroque atmosphere ahead the tragic love story of the Trojan prince and the of Carthage, the most significant work by an outstanding figure of English early music, Henry Purcell.