Reception Radio Double Feature: two songs from Dido and Aeneas, by Henry Purcell

Why not start the new year with a double feature? And why not start with a piece of music I’ve loved for decades?

There’s so much to say about Henry Purcell’s 1688 opera Dido and Aeneas. It’s a stunning piece of music that’s stood the test of time better than a lot of Baroque opera, and it adds some fascinating nuance to the well-trodden story of Virgil’s Aeneid. I could write an extended essay about Purcell’s treatment of the title characters, let alone what he does with the supporting cast of nobility, magic-weavers, and gods. But for now, let’s zero in on a few little fragments of a larger story, and look at some details.

Consider this special edition of Reception Radio a warm-up for a longer future post, where I’ll discuss the entire opera at greater length. I’d rather talk about two small excerpts in a post of their own: they’re tangential parts of the main opera, but they’re lovely and deserve our attention.

These two songs, Thanks to These Lonesome Vales and Oft She Visits This Lone Mountain, don’t do much to advance the plot of Dido and Aeneas. However, they have the important job of detailing the setting of this opera, bringing the world of Virgil’s epic story to life. They both contain pastoral themes, singing the praises of rural landscapes and inhabitants. Pastoral themes and reverence for idealized rural spaces date back to antiquity, including in Virgil’s own writing from turn-of-the-millennium Rome. Beautiful countryside settings, pretty nymphs and shepherds, and stories that take place in the middle of nowhere are popular old standbys in media based on the ancient Mediterranean. An extended sequence in Dido and Aeneas features the titular characters venturing into the countryside to go hunting, leaving the metropolis of Carthage behind and seeking refuge away from civilization. These two songs set the tone for that sequence, with ample lyrical references to wild spaces and, more interestingly, a wild deity.

Both these songs centre Diana (Artemis if, like me, you prefer her Greek name). In Thanks to These Lonesome Vales, she’s invoked to praise the wilderness where Dido and Aeneas go hunting. They’re entering a landscape filled with wild game, the sort of landscape over which she watches. By extension, she might pay attention to them. They’re also mimicking her by going hunting, especially Dido, as a queen with an entourage of women. It’s worth mentioning that the soloists in Thanks to These Lonesome Vales and Oft She Visits This Lone Mountain are members of Dido’s female support network.

In Oft She Visits This Lone Mountain, we step away from the Aeneid for a moment with references to a different myth, the story of Actaeon. If you’ve read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (or any decent modern mythology book), you’ll know that he was a hunter who came across Diana/Artemis bathing in the forest and couldn’t help but stare at her. Furious, she turned him into a deer and he was torn to shreds by his own hunting dogs. It’s a charged, violent story: I read it as something of a feminist revenge narrative, with a powerful woman lashing out at a man who’s violated her boundaries. In the context of Dido and Aeneas, Diana’s quick, immediate violence serves as a foil for Dido, who enacts violence not against a man, but upon herself. She’s smitten with Aeneas, who has a heroic journey he must undergo, leaving her behind. They fight bitterly about the prospect of him leaving, and when he sails away from Carthage, she commits suicide (in Purcell’s version of events, she dies after singing a stunning death lament).

These two songs flesh out the world of Dido and Aeneas, situating it within a broader realm of mythology. By referencing an older story that has already come to pass, they draw attention to the Aeneid as a late-stage myth, happening after the Trojan War and at the tail end of an age of heroes. Their invocation of Diana reminds listeners of the continued presence of deities in this opera’s world. These songs may seem like fleeting moments in a longer musical narrative, but they’re storytelling gems in their own right. Dido and Aeneas wouldn’t be quite the same without them.

Here are the lyrics to these passages from Dido and Aeneas:

Thanks to these lonesome vales,

These desert hills and dales,

So fair the game, so rich the sport,

Diana’s self might to these woods resort.

*****

Oft she visits this lone mountain,

Oft she bathes her in this fountain;

Here Actaeon met his fate,

Pursued by his own hounds,

And after mortal wounds

Discover’d, discover’d too late.