PROGRAM NOTES

English opera in the seventeenth century was rooted in the masque. The main interest of the masque, like the French court ballet, was its costumes and spectacle. Ben Johnson became the principal author of masques, distinguished by their spoken dialogue, and the theatrical genius Inigo Jones designed their costumes and sets. Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, a direct descendant of the masque, was, instead, a true opera-it is sung throughout.

Purcell was lucky to have been born at the historical moment of 1659. Although masques flourished in the first half of the century under James I and Charles I, during the Commonwealth under Cromwell (1649-1660) masques were no longer given publicly. (They were, however, performed in schools, as was Dido and Aeneas.) Purcell was born a year before the Restoration of Charles II, just in time for the professional theater to return, in an altered form, from its exile. To get around the Puritans, authors of these new works, which now introduced movable scenery, a front curtain drawn up rather than parted, and an orchestra in front of the stage, still declined to call them "operas," or even "theater," but rather "A Representation by the Art of Prospective in Scenes and the Story Sung in Recitative Musick." Such slippery semantics managed to disguise the fact that these were indeed forbidden theatrical productions.

Charles II was influenced by French music and even tried to lure Lully from Paris to his court. French music, especially the form of its overtures, as well as English folksongs, Italian recitative, pastorals, choruses, word painting, ground basses, mid-Baroque fugal writing, and the "agitated style" of theatrical music all influenced Purcell. All are found in Dido and Aeneas.

The most significant influence was that of his teacher, John Blow, who had written Venus and Adonis in 1682. Blow’s opera combines these same ingredients successfully, and Purcell and Tate "went to school" on it. Several mysteries surround Dido, however. When exactly was it written? Was it written for court or for the long-thought girl’s boarding school in Chelsea? Was it possibly an allegory for events in the reign of James II? And we do not inherit a copy of the score in Purcell’s hand. (We do have the original printed libretto.) It is agreed that the opera was never performed publicly in Purcell’s short lifetime.

The Baroque period, like the late Renaissance, put great store on the painting of individual words and lines by appropriate music. Examples abound in Dido: Belinda’s very first word, "Shake," is sung with a dotted, shaking figure. Listen, too, for "languish," "cry," "weeps," "drooping wings," the thunder of the storm, and echo effects in both chorus and orchestra, representing the hunt. The air from Act I, "Pursue they conquest love," uses horn-call figures and this echoing to suggest the chase.

On a structural level, listen for Purcell’s use of a ground bass, that is a bass pattern repeating identically under a vocal line that changes. The three examples are: first, Dido’s first aria ("I am prest"); second, in the second act, scene 2, the Second Lady’s "Oft she visits this loved mountain;" and third, and most famously, at the end of the opera, Dido’s Lament "When I am laid in earth." If you count the eleven times the slow five-bar descending chromatic bass pattern repeats-a Baroque signal of a lament-you may miss one of the most affecting arias about grief and death in all of opera. Try to listen to both simultaneously.

Unlike most choruses in Baroque opera, Purcell’s chorus partakes of the action of the drama, rather than merely commenting on it from a distance. The chorus frequently follows an aria as a pairing, thus creating building blocks for the dramatic units. By the second scene of the third act the edifice is so strong that Dido’s, Belinda’s, and Aeneas’s airs and duets flow smoothly into each other; the mortar of building blocks gives way to through-composition. This method of text setting has, as an added advantage, the ability to get through a lot of text quickly. Dido and Aeneas is the best example of a Purcell opera in which this naturalistic, dramatic dialogue occurs; it departs for Italian recitative in favor of free arioso. (Other Purcell operas include The Tempest, The Rival Sisters, A Fool’s Preferment, Oroonoko, and The Fairy Queen.)

Like Dido, Purcell died too young-at only 36. If Purcell had lived longer, he doubtless could have created an English national opera to parallel the French tragédies lyriques of Lully and the long-standing Italian opera. (The Italians, of course, had invented opera at the beginning of the century.) Purcell only needed a better librettist than Nahum Tate and a higher level of public taste. Only a decade after Purcell’s death in 1695, the German composer Handel arrived in London to pursue his career as an opera composer. By then the public’s taste had so altered that Handel wrote operas only in Italian-it never occurred to him to write an opera in English. Opera in English had died abruptly (see box) in England, not to reappear for two centuries, until the flowering of the twentieth century, including such luminaries as composer Benjamin Britten.

-Andrea Olmstead
Ms. Olmstead is the Society’s Christopher Hogwood Research Fellow for the 2005-2006 season. The author of three books on Roger Sessions and of Juilliard: A History, she has published numerous articles and CD liner notes, produced recordings, and taught Music History for thirty-two years.

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