Tag Archives: Dido and Aeneas

Orfeo ed Euridice, and Dido and Aeneas, Grange Festival, June 2023

Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas are in a sense mirror images of one another. The Gluck starts with a tragic death and ends happily, the Purcell is the reverse. Gluck’s opera, first performed in Vienna in 1762, had a great effect on what came later in Germany and was particularly influential …

Read more >


Dido and Aeneas by Purcell, and Acis and Galatea by Handel, Royal Opera, April 2009

Acis and Galatea is a beautiful work, musically speaking … composed as a pastoral serenata, which means it would be sung without elaborate staging, though the performers would probably have worn costumes … This staging by Wayne McGregor was frightfully elaborate, which I think detracted from the beauty of the work

Read more >