Remembering the fallen at the Cenotaph in London this Sunday, the massed bands of the Guards Division will play a brass arrangement of an aria from one of the earliest English operas: Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.
Although its origins are murky, we know it was composed by the Westminster Abbey organist sometime between 1683 and 1688, setting a revised version of Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid to continuous music. Some scholars argue that it received its first airing at the court of either Charles II or James II; others have claimed that the opera’s first known performance occurred at Josias Priest’s girls’ school in Chelsea in the summer of 1688, though this story is now questioned. Perhaps this account of a youthful premiere is connected to the relative simplicity of the final aria delivered by Dido, Queen of Carthage, dying of a broken heart on learning that her fiancé, Trojan warrior Aeneas, plans to abandon her (although she commits suicide in the Roman epic).
The libretto by Dublin-born poet laureate Nahum Tate (best known today for his lyrics to "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks") sees Dido ordering the repentant Aeneas from her sight, then feeling the darkness of death cast its shadow upon her.
As the betrayed woman’s body slips from the world on a descending, repeating, five-bar "ground bass", her soul ascends on the wings of a piercing, nine-bar melody. She sings: “When I am laid in Earth, May my wrongs create/ No trouble in thy breast; Remember me, but ah! Forget my fate.” Her “Remember me” flies out on one note, first on a regal high D soaring in fear and triumph to a more penetrating high G on the third repetition.
The opera was not performed between 1705 and 1895, and the aria most frequently lifted out for concert performances was the more upbeat "Fear No Danger". Although sheet music sales from the 19th century onwards saw "Dido’s Lament" played and sung in private homes, it only began to achieve mainstream popularity with the Baroque revival of the early 20th century. By 1930 it was well-loved enough to be cemented into our national identity as an ongoing part of the nation’s Remembrance Day service and by 2010 it was voted the nation’s favourite aria by BBC Radio 3 listeners.
The first notable recording was made in 1935 by Liverpudlian mezzo-soprano Nancy Evans, whose lovely legato had real gravitas though she was still only 19. Norway’s Kirsten Flagstad recorded a majestic version in 1952, but most fans think Janet Baker gave the definitive Dido in 1961. Emma Kirkby gave the piece a refreshingly crisp, modern turn in 1981; Jessye Norman walked a tense tightrope between stubborn power and whispered vulnerability in 1985; and scholarly Catherine Bott offered her own form of thoughtful intensity in 2005. The lightly embellished emotion of Sarah Connolly’s 2009 reading is also a treat.
Modern countertenors Andreas Scholl and David Hansen (the Australian operating online under the nickname “guywhosingshigh”) have also given excellent accounts (in 2011 and 2013). But the most arrestingly weird male version is by German Klaus Nomi, who recorded it as “Death” in 1982, a year before he died of complications from Aids, aged 39. Nomi was signed to RCA after an American TV performance with David Bowie (from whom he stole his signature plastic tuxedo stage style); his otherworldly Dido is backed by the macabre vibrations of synthesisers and bone-rattling harpsichord.
Due to the similarities between jazz and baroque bass lines, the aria has appealed to the polo-necked folk. But the breeziness of versions such as Jenny Evans’s 2004 version sits uncomfortably with the solemnity of the content. Honourable mention, though, goes to The Modern Jazz Quartet and The Swingle Singers for their strangely haunting 1967 recording, from which Milt Jackson’s vibraphone notes waft like smoke from the diva’s funeral pyre.
Rock and pop singers to essay it include Jeff Buckley (spectral and spine-tingling, recorded live in 1995), Alison Moyet (richly human in 2004) and Ane Brun, whose fingers slipped audibly up the steely semitones of her acoustic guitar on a folky take in 2005.
Film buffs may have noticed the aria appearing, with poignant irony, in the final frames of 2004’s Downfall, dramatising Hitler’s final days in his bunker.
After Dido’s death, Tate’s libretto calls for cupids to scatter rose petals on her tomb. This Sunday, we will wear our paper poppies.
Do you have a favourite performance of ‘Dido’s Lament’? Let us know in the comments below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s
Music credits: BNF Collection; Decca Music Group Ltd; Decca (UMO); Universal Music AB
Picture credit: Royal Collection Trust