Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.

1988; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 26; Issue: 01 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5860/choice.26-0228

1943-5975

Ellen T. Harris,

Theater, Performance, and Music History

Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas stands as the greatest operatic achievement of seventeenth-century England, and yet the work remains cloaked in mystery. The date and place of its first performance cannot be fixed with precision, and the accuracy of the surviving scores cannot be assumed. In this thirtieth-anniversary new edition of her book, Ellen Harris provides a detailed consideration of the many theories that have been proposed for the opera’s origin and chronology. She re-evaluates the surviving sources for the various readings they offer and examines the work’s historical position in Restoration theater. She also offers a detailed discussion of Purcell’s musical declamation and use of ground bass. The final section of the book is devoted to the performance history of Dido and Aeneas from the eighteenth century to the present.