Luogo e data di registrazione		Casino Zögernitz, Vienna (Austria) - marzo 1983
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		-
	Edizione CD		TELDEC - 8.42919 XH (242 959-2) - (1 CD - durata 54' 32") - (c) 1989 - DDD
	Originale LP		TELDEC - 6.42919 AZ - (1 LP - durata 54' 32") - (p) 1983 - Digitale
	Note		-

Long before 1724, when Pietro Metastasio produced “Didone abbandonata”, his first independent opera text which was to be setto music on several occasions, Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” had been performed in a boarding school for “young gcntlewomen” in Chelsea in December (?) l689. Josias Priests, the Head of the stablishment,was also a dancing master at the Dorset Garden Theatre in London, where he had evidently got to know Purcell who, not least for the benefit of Priest, included a number of dances in his opera; dancing was at that time an essential element in educatlon. At the first performance of "Dido and Aeneas" Purcell himself played the harpslchord. The pupils performed on stage, though the part of Aeneas, which was written in the tenor clef, may have been sungby a member of the teaching staff or of the Chapel Royal. In Book 4 of the “Aeneid" Virgil describes how Aeneas, having been driven out of burning Troy, reaches the court of the Carthaginian Queen Dido. After a brief amorous interlude, however, he obeys the command of the gods to weigh anchor once more. In the struggle between love and duty, (Roman) self-sacrifice triumphs in Virgil's epic. While Aeneua, putting aside his personal happines, bows to the divine will. the unhappy Queen commits suicide. In Nahum Tate's libretto il is not really Jove at all who reminds Aeneas of his historic mission. In a typically English adsptation of the classical plot witches, in whose actual existence many people may well still have believed, cause the destructtion of the bonds of love that join Dido and Aeneas. The Spirit of a Sorceress, disguised as the god Mercury, charges the hero to leave Carthage and to set out on the conquest of Italy. Incidentally, in comparison with the female title role the character of Aeneas remains rather colourless and sketchily drawn. All the additional background of Virgil's epic is cut out. At Dido'ss side stands Belinda, the typical "confidante”, well-known in Venetian Opera, a noblewoman in the retinue of the Queen. Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas" is a work cast all in one piece. And yet the stimuli which are taken up in it and fused into a new whole are stylistically quite different. At the beginning of Act l Belinda sings the aria "Shake the cloud" ln a Venetian da carlo form which still sounds embryonic. Dido’s moving aria "When I am laid in earth” over an ostinato descending chromatically through a fourth is in the tradition of the “Lamento Aria" which was then fashionable not only in Italian opera. The Echo Chorus of the witches (“In our deep vaulted cell”) owes a debt to Lullly (quite apart from the overture, which is in the French style, even though in this case  it is only in two sections). In the chorus Cupid only throwa the dart" ans eòsewhere Purcell employs the English madrigal style-  Several numbers, on the other hand, bear a resemblance to English folk song and folk dance, such as the duet leading up to the chorus "Dear no danger", with its syncopation in triple time, the chorus "To the hills and the vales", tha sailors' dance in the third act or the sailors' chorus "Come away, fellow silors" with its typical Scotch snap on the words "no never". Right up to the moving final "funeral song" "Whit drooping wings ye Cupids come" Purcell allocates an important role to the Chorus. The arias are handled with great variety, while there is nothing yet of the rigid stereotype in the often expression-packed recitatives. The closest approach to Purcell's score, which has an unrivalled place in the history of English opera, is John Blow's miniature opera "Venus and Adonis", written as a Masque for the Court in 1685. The history of the performances of the opera can only be briefly sketched. It is no longer possible to discoverwhether it was performed more than the once at Josias Priest's establishment in Chelsea. In the years 1700 and 1704 there certainly were performances at the Little Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, where "Dido and Aeneas" was inserted as a Masque in dramatic performances (for example in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure"). The revival of the opera began in 1878 with a concert performance by the Gluck Society; in 1895, on the 200th anniversary of Purcell's death, "Dido and Aeneas" returned to the London stage for the first time. Its almost universal acceptance did not occur until 1920's, when "Dido and Aeneas" was staged in Münster and Stuttgart, in Vienna, Paris and New York and other cities. In these performances widely differing arrangements of Purcell's masterpiece were used. No really authentic score has survived. The oldest extant scores, not differing greatly from one another in details of either the text or the music, were not copied until some sixty years after Purcell's death. Gerhard Schuhmacher (Translation: Lindsay Craig)