Ariadne | Dido & Aeneas

You left for dead. I love you

A double-bill of timeless stories of love and loss.

ARIADNE

Ariadne wakes on the shore and finds Theseus gone. She helped him escape Crete, leaving her home, her family, and the life she knew behind. Now she has been abandoned.

King Minos’ daughter writes to the lover who has deserted her in a poignant one-act drama which explores the rage and pain of a break-up. An intimate retelling of the myth of Ariadne, Elena Langer sets Glyn Maxwell’s poem Ariadne to Theseus into a 20-minute powerhouse performance for soprano for the first half of ETO’s Autumn Double Bill.

DIDO & AENEAS

Queen Dido finally admits her love for the Trojan war hero, Aeneas, and agrees to marry him, despite her fears that this passion weakens her as a leader. But just as the lovers celebrate, supernatural and natural forces combine to drive them apart and Dido’s worst fears are realised, with devastating consequences.

One of the first and still best-loved of all English operas, Purcell distills this classic story into a masterful hour of beauty, drama and desolation.

Sung in English with English surtitles.