Purcell: Dido & Aeneas

About the album

Dido’s famous lament, ‘When I am laid in earth’ has long featured in Joyce DiDonato’s repertoire – and she has triumphed as the tragic Queen of Carthage in Berlioz’s Les Troyens – but it was in early 2024 that she first performed Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas in its entirety. With Il Pomo d’Oro, conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, and a cast including Fatma Said as Dido’s companion Belinda, DiDonato toured extensively in Europe. This recording was made in Essen’s Philharmonie, where Michael Spyres took the role of Aeneas. The two stars have been through this all before, as Spyres sang Énée to DiDonato’s Didon in the prizewinning Erato recording of Les Troyens, conducted in 2017 by the late John Nelson.

Dido’s lament, the opera’s most celebrated number, is sung with a concentration that grips in every phrase.

Financial Times

DiDonato is magnificent in her introspection, legato and nuances, spinning out the long lines of this cantilena, where the melody seems to wander over an imperturbable bass, then explodes as if in a cry on "yet would", before the repetition of the phrase becomes lighter each time, the voice becoming diaphanous, until a morendo ending, where the strings as a whole support her. An aria that is a premonition of her final lamento.

Forum Opéra

...DiDonato’s interpretation goes beyond those two readings, charting the Dido’s emotional upheaval with unerring mastery. Her astonishing vocal prowess (in which the voice is never ‘scaled back’ to fit an idealized Baroque sound) dispatches every technical hurdle with ease, focusing our attention on the unfolding emotional tragedy.

The Classic Review

En cette rentrée des classes, difficile de passer à côté du bouleversant Didon et Enée qui vient de paraitre chez Erato/Warner Classics. Cet album tient en effet du miracle. Menée par Maxim Emelyanychev et l’Ensemble Il Pomodoro, l’équipe réunie ici a tout pour séduire : une Joyce DiDonato idéale en Didon, le formidable Énée de Michael Spyres, la Belinda si délicate de Fatma Said, un trio de Sorcières assez incroyable (Beth Taylor, Alena Dantcheva, Ana Piroli), pour ne rien dire de l’Esprit de Hugh Cutting… Pour plus de détails sur ce disque, nous vous renvoyons au très détaillé compte-rendu de Charles Sigel. Notre indéniable disque du mois !

Forum Opéra

DiDonato’s performance displays all of her familiar virtues: impeccable musicianship, clear diction, and intensity of expression without any over-emoting or falling into bathos.

Parterre