Purcell’s tragic opera in Palma

Palma’s Teatre Principal is sometimes referred to as the city’s opera house, even if the staging of grand operas tends to be reserved to only four a year.

For the 2024/2025 season, Puccini’s Turandot was the first in October. The second is one of the master works of English Baroque music, Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

It premiered, oddly enough perhaps, at a girls’ school in London in 1689 and all but disappeared until the end of the nineteenth century, when students at the Royal College of Music staged at London’s Lyceum. It then went on to get global recognition, the storyline being that of the love of Dido, Queen of Carthage, for the Trojan hero Aeneas.

Spanish mezzosoprano Maite Beaumont will take the role of Dido, she being a leading singer known for her Baroque repertoire.