About Elena Langer: Ariadne & Purcell: Dido & Aeneas
A double bill of timeless stories of love and loss.
Elena Langer: Ariadne
You left for dead. I love you.
Ariadne wakes on the shore and finds Theseus gone. She helped him escape Crete, leaving her home, her family, and the life she once knew behind. Now she has been abandoned. King Minos' daughter writes to the lover who has abandoned her in a poignant one-act drama which explores how absence is defined by love. A powerful and intimate retelling of the myth of Ariadne, Elena Langer sets Glyn Maxwell’s Poem Ariadne to Theseus for the first half of English Touring Opera’s Autumn Double Bill.
Purcell: Dido & Aeneas
Queen Dido of Carthage prepares to wed the Trojan hero, Aeneas. But the rejected King Iarbas plans his revenge, threatening to drive the lovers apart. Based on Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid, Purcell’sDido and Aeneas recalls the tragedy of the Queen of Carthage in a masterpiece of Baroque music, theatricality and despair.
