Dido, Queen of Carthage (opera) but has fallen in love with the Trojan warrior Aeneas, who had been shipwrecked on the shores of her city. Iarbas appears (disguised as his own ambassador and using the name "Orodes") to warn Dido that Aeneas cannot become King of Carthage. Nevertheless, Dido refuses to marry Iarbas. Although Aeneas is now in love with Dido, he asks her sister Anna to tell Dido of his plans to leave Carthage for Italy. War then breaks out between Aeneas and Iarbas. Dido convinces Aeneas to become her husband and share the throne of Carthage. However, when the ghost of Aeneas' father
Dido, Queen of Carthage (opera) was employed upon the "Didone Abbandonata" of Metastasio; and fitted its music, I fear, not with syllable, but English words, distributed into recitative and air; and Dido, with immense splendour of scenery, dresses, and decorations, was brought out on the 23rd of May. Madame Mara was your Dido, Kelly Iarbas, and the pious Eneas Mrs Crouch herself! There was, for garnish, a masque, in which Bannister was the Neptune, Miss Collins Venus, and the three Graces, Misses Decamp, Jacobs, and Heard. And yet, all this, with the aid of Sedgewick, and Dignum, and Master Welsh, with supernumeraries out of number,