Dido, Queen of Carthage (opera) role of Anfossi's "Didone abbandonata" and had sung at the King's Theatre several times in the intervening years. The role of Aeneas was sung "en travesti" by the English soprano and stage actress, Anna Maria Crouch. Her lover and frequent stage partner, Michael Kelly, sang the tenor role of Iarbas. The pair had appeared in several earlier works by Storace, including "No song, no supper" (1790) and "The Siege of Belgrade" (1791) and would later appear in his comic opera "The Pirates". "Dido, Queen of Carthage" opened on 23 May 1792 at The King's Theatre and was scheduled to run
Carthage like clay masks. "Thanks to this burial archaeology we know more about archaic Carthage than about any other contemporary city in the western Mediterranean." Already in the eighth century, fabric dyeing operations had been established, evident from crushed shells of murex (from which the 'Phoenician purple' was derived). Nonetheless, only a "meager picture" of the cultural life of the earliest pioneers in the city can be conjectured, and not much about housing, monuments or defenses. The Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC) imagined early Carthage, when his legendary character Aeneas had arrived there: "Aeneas found, where lately huts had been, marvelous