the engraved scores of some of Lulli's operas, which, considering the
close intercourse between the courts of France and England, may have
found their way across the Channel. 'Dido and Æneas' is now universally
spoken of as the first English opera. Masques had been popular from the
time of Queen Elizabeth onwards, which the greatest living poets and
musicians had not disdained to produce, and Sir William Davenant had
given performances of musical dramas 'after the manner of the Ancients'
during the closing years of the Commonwealth, but it is probable that
spoken dialogue occurred in all these entertainments, as it certainly
did in Locke's 'Psyche,' Banister's 'Circe,' in fact, in all the
dramatic works of this period which were wrongly described as operas. In
'Dido and Æneas,' on the contrary, the music is continuous throughout.
Airs and recitatives, choruses and instrumental pieces succeed each
other, as in the operas of the Italian and French schools. 'Dido and
Æneas' was written for performance at a young ladies' school kept by
one Josias Priest in Leicester Fields and afterwards at Chelsea. The
libretto was the work of Nahum Tate, the Poet Laureate of the time. The
opera is in three short acts, and Virgil's version of the story is
followed pretty closely save for the intrusion of a sorceress and a
chorus of witches who have sworn Dido's destruction and send a messenger
to Æneas, disguised as Mercury, to hasten his departure. Dido's death
song, which is followed by a chorus of mourning Cupids, is one of the
most pathetic scenes ever written, and illustrates in a forcible manner
Purcell's beautiful and ingenious use of a ground-bass. The gloomy
chromatic passage constantly repeated by the bass instruments, with
ever-varying harmonies in the violins, paints such a picture of the
blank despair of a broken heart as Wagner himself, with his immense
orchestral resources, never surpassed. In the general construction of
his opera Purcell followed the French model, but his treatment of
recitative is bolder and more various than that of Lulli, while as a