Dido and Aeneas Reconsidered

PURCELL’S Dido and Aeneas is an oft performed opera whose libretto is not often seriously considered. In conducting Dido at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival this summer, with the collaboration of such fine artists as Stephen Stubbs, Anna Marsh, and Paul Miller, I once again had the occasion to reconsider this enigmatic work. The subtle nature of the libretto has led to wildly different interpretations, including a postmodern attempt in which the apparent confusion in the mind of Dido is explained by making her the Sorceress as well, in a kind of psychodrama where she doesn’t know herself.

For several years I’ve been moving toward a more natural explanation of the motivation behind the behaviors of the principal characters. This begins with allowing for the possibility that the authors knew exactly what they were doing. In particular, it’s reasonable to assume that they knew they could count on their audience to figure out Dido’s guilty secret, which could not be made explicit on stage, given the mores of the period.

The “Classical Unities” from Greek drama govern the action in Dido, as would have been expected in 17th-century London. The subject is singular, the place is Carthage, and a single day’s events unfold to their unhappy denouement. But in Aeneas’s soliloquy at the end of Act II, when he believes he has been ordered by Jove to leave Dido and proceed that very night on his fateful trip to conquer Rome, we find the key to the drama. He reflects on how unfair his departure will be to his “injur’d Queen”—“How can so hard a fate be took? One night enjoyed, the next forsook.” As the night she is to be forsaken is the night within the 24-hour period of the drama, we are quite explicitly presented with the fact that the love of Dido and Aeneas was “enjoyed” the night before the opera begins!

Now everything makes sense. Dido enters in Act I in a state of anguish, which seems odd when such an ideal suitor is at her doorstep. Not only that, but she is consumed by a secret she must hide. “Ah, Belinda,” she begins, “I am press’d, with torment not to be confess’d. Peace and I are strangers grown, I languish till my grief is known, yet would not have it guess’d.” I am not aware of any staging that seeks an understanding of this secret, when it’s quite clear what the real problem is—she has shared love with Aeneas, secretly, and she has found it far less than perfect. He may be the ideal suitor, but she is not pleased with him!

Her woman Belinda opines that “grief increases by concealing” but Dido retorts quickly, “Mine admits of no revealing,” before sarcastically belittling Aeneas (“Whence did so much virtue spring?”).

Aeneas’s odd behavior at his first entrance is also now clear. He breezily asks, “When, royal fair, shall I be bless’d, with cares of love and state distress’d?” probably assuming that a pleasant charade will be necessary for a little while until the affair he assumes to be a fait accompli is made public. Imagine his shock when Dido snaps at him: “Fate forbids what you

pursue!” He then has to fall back on geopolitics: “If not for mine, for Empire’s sake, some pity on your lover take.” He clearly was perfectly happy with his amorous conquest, and indeed he seems to have the backing of the court ladies who believe, with good reason, that the match would be good for all, at least in political terms.

Here is the tragedy of Dido: she understands this, too, but she finds Aeneas to be something of a brick, a boor, who may well be a mighty hero with an important kingdom and the promise of even more glory, but who does not satisfy her. She perceives that this match is indeed her last hope, but that it is of no avail. She may ask “Earth and Heaven” for help, but ultimately her faith is in Fate itself, which has spoken in her case, and unluckily for her, spoken unfavorably. Only Fate can decree that this match, with all its apparent advantages, is not worth living for. When Aeneas leaves, there is nothing left for her but death, and her lament asks of everyone that she herself be remembered, but not her Fate. The authors clearly see her as the innocent victim here, not as any kind of harpy or twisted soul (as she is often portrayed), and they call on Cupids to scatter roses on her tomb, as she is the victim of Love.

The easy part of the opera is the coven of witches who plot her downfall, but they are just the same agents of evil that are present everywhere in our lives. They hate “all in prosp’rous state”—an envy that hardly began or ended in Purcell’s day. It’s always easy for the forces of darkness to confuse those like Aeneas who are brave, proud, aggressive, but who need to be a lot more subtle to snare the likes of Dido. The Witches put their finger right on the issue—“Elissa’s ruined,” they cackle, and indeed she is, although not in the simplest sense, since a reigning queen would hardly be called to task for such a dalliance. Elizabeth surely wasn’t.

And this explains the greatest riddle of all, why such a piece would be performed at, and perhaps even created for, a school for young ladies of the better classes. Such women, then as now, have always tended to see themselves as special and perhaps not exactly bound by the moral standards applied to their lesser sisters. If one were trying to urge them nonetheless to observe the proprieties, a mindless sermon would hardly suffice. But the story of a widowed queen, seemingly free of the usual restraints, nonetheless falling into a state of ruin on account of a mistaken dalliance, might indeed have carried a message that even the most sophisticated young lady might have to admit carried a serious warning. We play with love and fate at our own peril!

Originally published in Early Music America, Winter 2013 issue