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| The Les Arts Florissants chorus - The real stars in Opéra Comique's Dido and Aeneas |
On October 1 the French-German television channel ARTE rebroadcast Henry Purcell's (1658 or 1659 - 169) only true opera, Dido and Aeneas, based on Virgil's account of Aeneas at Carthage. The opera, which has a tragic ending (unusual in baroque opera), includes some of the most beautiful music ever written for chorus and soloists.
ARTE showed a Paris Opéra Comique 2008 production, directed by Deborah Warner. The soloists - with the Swedish mezzo soprano Malena Erdman as Queen Dido and Christopher Maltman as Prince Aeneas - were very good, but the real stars of the evening were the members of the Les Arts Florissants chorus and orchestra. The sheer beauty of the singing in the final chorus of cupids, "with drooping wings", made the end of the opera extremely touching.
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