Dido and Aeneas Dido and Aeneas Dido and Aeneas (Z. 626) is an opera in a prologue and three acts, written by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell with a libretto by Nahum Tate. The dates of the composition and first performance of the opera are uncertain. It was composed no later than July 1688, and had been performed at Josias Priest's girls' school in London by the end of 1689. Some scholars argue for a date of composition as early as 1683. The story is based on Book IV of Virgil's "Aeneid". It recounts the love of Dido, Queen of Carthage, for
Elysium becomes the Ruler of the Black Sea, and Diomedes becomes the divine lord of an Adriatic island". Pindar's "Odes" describes the reward waiting for those living a righteous life: In Virgil's "Aeneid", Aeneas, like Heracles and Odysseus before him, travels to the underworld. Virgil describes those who will travel to Elysium, and those who will travel to Tartarus: Virgil goes on to describe an encounter in Elysium between Aeneas and his father Anchises. Virgil's Elysium knows perpetual spring and shady groves, with its own sun and lit by its own stars: "solemque suum, sua sidera norunt". In the Greek historian