Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas / by Ellen T. Harris.
| Author/creator | Harris, Ellen T. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication Info | Oxford : Clarendon Press ; Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1987. |
| Description | xii, 184 pages, 12 pages of plates : illustrations, music, portraits ; 23 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Background to the music -- First performance: place, date, and artistic climate -- Text: synopsis and history -- Text: literary style -- The music -- The Tenbury manuscript: discrepancies between it and the printed texts -- The Tenbury manuscript: omissions -- Choruses and dances -- Musical and dramatic structure -- Musical declamation -- Ground bass techniques -- Performance history -- The late eighteenth-century performances -- Late eighteenth-century sources -- Musical adaptation -- The nineteenth-century revival -- Twentieth-century performance trends -- Reorchestrations -- Authenticity -- Appendix: A short, annotated performance history of Dido and Aeneas -- National premieres -- Editions -- Recordings -- References to individual movements. |
| Abstract | Although it takes little more than an hour to perform, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas stands as the greatest operatic achievement of seventeenth-century England. This book demonstrates the opera's deep roots in the theatrical and musical traditions of its day, summarizing the cultural climate in which the opera was composed and analyzing Nahum Tate's libretto in light of seventeenth-century English music text conventions. Harris also evaluates the surviving sources, comparing them with the original libretto, and discusses the work's performance history and critical reception from the first performance through the revivals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 174-178) and indexes. |
| LCCN | 87005621 |
| ISBN | 0193152533 : |