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ENSEMBLE INFO

Ensemble Contact:

Email:

contact@monteverdistringband.com

2003

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

We have created a version of the Dido and Aeneas story, provisionally titled ‘Wandering Prince, Unhappy Queen,’ in which Purcell’s music will be intertwined with readings from Virgil and other authors alongside art songs and broadside ballads, with the aim of giving the audience the backstory and context for the actions depicted in Nahum Tate’s pithy but incomplete libretto. Virgil’s Aeneid, in which the story is told in the greatest detail, was much better known to Purcell’s audiences than today, and we will offer our listeners a fresh, vivid, and poignant experience by making explicit those parts of the story which would have been implicitly understood in the 17th century.

For example, we hear of Aeneas’ inescapable destiny, after the ravages of the Trojan war, to found a new civilisation in Italy: Rome. Dido, we learn, is threatened on all sides by vengeful rejected lovers, a powerful and jealous brother from whose kingdom she had fled, and local uprisings, resentful of the territory she has occupied – the loss of honour and reputation she suffers after the affair leaves her so vulnerable as to be utterly helpless, and she chooses to die rather than be left to the mercy of her enemies.

The performance will take place on 4 October at the Roman River Festival at a venue in Colchester; the festival is keen to exploit the connection with local Roman history through Aeneas’ role as the founder of Rome.

Also involved in the performance will be a local youth choir conducted and trained by Ben Vonberg-Clark; they will sing some of the choruses and broadside ballads. We put on a similar event at Roman River in 2024 with Ben and the Wivenhoe Youth Choir taking part in a performance of our programme ‘The Madrigal Reimagined’, which was very successful, and we would like to build on this relationship.

Some of the roles will be taken by emerging artists, either from the Wild Arts Emerging Artist Programme or from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where director Oliver Webber has been working with singers on style and ornamentation, with a particular focus on Purcell.

We do not plan to stream the performance, but we do plan to record parts of it for future publicity and promotion; we very much hope to bring this performance to more festivals: Purbeck Art Weeks in Dorset has already expressed an interest for 2027.

The concert programme is not yet prepared, so we have uploaded an outline of the latest version of the script (currently still in development) to give a sense of how the readings and songs integrate with Purcell’s musical setting.

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