Written for the World Premiere of Dido’s Ghost, Barbican Centre, London.  June 6th, 2021.

Tonight we present the East Coast premiere of Errollyn Wallen’s opera Dido’s Ghost, which picks up the story of Dido and Aeneas where Purcell left off. The composer offers some insight into how a new opera is born in the 21st century.
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Ideas for operas drop in my email inbox on a weekly basis and I, myself am always dreaming about possibilities for all kinds of dramatic setting. It is one thing to have a great idea, but quite another to realise that idea to its full potential. Some notions seem so captivating initially but in the cold light of investigation they simply wither away.  As anyone who has ever created any aspect of any opera, knows, it is a life-shortening exercise – and a task that is never quite over. At each reading, listening, rehearsal and production there is so much more to discover, so much more to adapt for the performer or performing situation. Yet opera is such an addictive art form, not least for the illuminations which collaboration offers. In December 2019, Paul Keene, then Classical Music Programmer at the Barbican, gave us the green light to turn a ten-year-old hunch into reality. Wesley Stace (in Philadelphia) and I (in the Scottish Highlands) have spent the last eighteen months hungrily walking back and forth in time, with Virgil, Ovid, Purcell, Tate and Ursula LeGuin by our side – shaking awake the dead until they revealed their secrets. As a composer I am used to interrogating composers long gone (for me that is the essence of composing) but these particular encounters with the past have led us to understand anew the stories which endure across cultures and time. There has been no better group of people to work with than the team who have brought Dido’s Ghost to life – of all the previous (nineteen) operas I’ve composed I never knew it could be this good. To have had the imagination, support and patience of such remarkable people has opened a door to new possibilities. Together, Wesley Stace, John Butt, Frederic Wake-Walker and I have made a little bit of history.  You will hear echoes and pre-echoes in the libretto, music and instrumentation which blur the demarcation between antiquity, eighteenth and twenty-first sensibilities. You will witness the wildest combination of music styles and performance practice from different cultures. You will hear and feel blistering emotion alongside icy detachment. You will apprehend the work of two pairs of librettists and composers with three centuries between them. But all you really have to remember is this: four creators have toiled in the service of commemorating what it is to be human – and what it is to love.

©Errollyn Wallen, June, 2021

WHO ARE DIDO AND AENEAS?

The story of the encounter between Dido, mythical queen of Carthage in North Africa, and Aeneas, one of the heroes on the losing (Trojan) side of the Trojan War, is retold most famously in Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid. Dido (also called Elissa) founded Carthage after fleeing from her birthplace near the Black Sea; her vengeful brother murdered her husband and usurped the throne. She has held her tiny kingdom together against threats from all her neighbors, partly due to her reputation for chastity and probity.Aeneas fought nobly to defend his city Troy from the Greek besiegers; as the Trojans were conquered he witnessed the slaughter of his wife and fled with his father, son, and a few loyal followers. His mother, the goddess Venus, looks out for him and has revealed his ultimate destiny to found Rome in the far-off land of Italy, by conquering the kingdom of Latium and marrying the king’s daughter Lavinia.Virgil begins his poem with a shipwreck as Aeneas and his ragged band of refugees from conquered Troy wash up on Carthage’s shore. As Dido welcomes the noble warrior and his followers, Venus infects her with an overwhelming desire for Aeneas. While the couple enjoy some time of happiness together, the gods ultimately compel him to follow his destiny and leave. Dido, her heart broken and her reputation in tattters, commits suicide.

HOW IS THEIR STORY TOLD IN PURCELL’S OPERA?

Purcell’s librettist, Nahum Tate, makes several changes to the narrative. Instead of the gods influencing Dido’s fatal passion, she is encouraged by her courtiers and her confidante Belinda to pursue Aeneas in order to secure Carthage’s future. Rather than divine fate, an evil spirit (the Sorceress) effects Dido’s destruction by sending a false messenger from Jove (Zeus) to order Aeneas to leave. Aeneas waffles, but Dido, crushed by his betrayal, sends him away and kills herself.

WHERE DOES THE STORY OF DIDO’S GHOST COME FROM?

In The Aeneid, Aeneas meets Dido’s shade in the Underworld when he is sent there to learn about his future. The rest of the plot of Wallen and Stace’s opera comes from a different Latin poet, Ovid, who tells the story of Dido’s sister Anna in his work Fasti. There we learn that after Dido’s suicide the realm collapsed, and Anna and Dido’s people were driven from their home. After a chaotic journey, only Anna survives and washes up on shore near Aeneas’s new kingdom. The plot picks up here, weaving together the threads of Ovid, Virgil, and Purcell/Tate to create a powerful and moving final act to Dido and Aeneas’s story.

©Pamela Dellal